Stolen

Author: Lucy Christopher

Reading level: Grade 9 and up

Summary:

Gemma is a 16-year-old who is traveling to Vietnam from England with her parents. At the Bangkok airport, she is drugged and kidnapped. When she wakes up, to her surprise, she is in an old, rustic house in the beautiful Australian Outback with a man who is not willing to let her go. Ty, her captor, has admitted to her that he is obsessed with her since she was a child. Evidently, he has been stalking her ever since. His plan is to keep her….forever! This novel is written in a form of a letter written by Gemma to Ty. Though Gemma at first hates both her kidnapper and the landscape, she gradually begins to warm toward both.

Review:

I don’t think this novel is suitable for young readers at all. Its plot is too weighted down and has too much symbolism. Also, it is far from reality that a kidnapper kidnaps his victim and treated her like the way Ty treats Gemma. When Gemma realizes what has happened to her, her emotions run the extent from terror to anger to disgust and then even love when her captor sacrifices himself to save her life.
It would have been tolerable had Gemma's letter to Ty been a few pages; instead reader must sit through nearly three hundred. To me, getting through the whole book was tiresome and dull. I would not recommend a tween reading this novel. It is more suitable for young adults. I give this one a three star.

Award: 2011 Printz Honor Book