Did I like it? I LOVED it!
You'll love it if you liked: Good YA literature.
Aura: Haunting, Intense, Gripping.
Read If: You're looking for an intense read that’ll leave you with awed and amazed and enthralled at the end.
Narration: First person
Main Characters: Gemma and Ty
Themes: Kidnapping, Obsession, Adaptation, Psychological developments, Friendship (maybe?)
Plot: 8.75/10
Narration: 9.9/10. Gemma’s voice rocked my socks off.
Characterization: 9.85/10. Beautiful characterization.
Overall: 9.75/10
Did I get bored anywhere? NO!
Did any part confuse me? Not at all. My own brain and how it responds to the story did though, in a good way.
Line/ Page Skippability: 0.25/5. I didn’t at all.
Writing Style: Short sentences, Informal, Expressive
Uniqueness: 9.6/10
Predictability: 0.5/10.
Imagery: 4.5/5. So descriptive and visual.
Cover: 9/10. I love how it’s simple but beautiful.
Ending: Realistic, unique, amazing closure.
Reading priority: Must, MUST read.
Reading duration: Fast readers-Approx. 6 hours, Slow readers- Approx. 10 days.
Synopsis:

“It happened like this.

I was stolen from an airport. Taken from everything I knew, everything I was used to. Taken to sand and heat, dirt and danger. And he expected me to love him. This is my story.

A letter from nowhere.”
Told in a letter to her captor by 16-year-old Gemma, Stolen explores the influence that a really wild and remote space can have on the inner development of a young woman.
Gemma, a British city-living teenager, is kidnapped while on holiday with her parents. Her kidnapper, Ty, takes her to the wild land of outback Australia. To Gemma’s city-eyes, the landscape is harsh and unforgiving and there are no other signs of human life for hundreds of kilometres in every direction. Here, there is no escape. Gemma must learn to deal with her predicament, or die trying to fight it.
Ty, a young man, has other ideas for her. His childhood experience of living in outback Australia has forever changed the way he sees things. But he too has been living in the city; Gemma’s city. Unlike Gemma, however, he has had enough. In outback Australia he sees an opportunity for a new kind of life; a life more connected to the earth. He has been watching and learning about Gemma for many years; when he kidnaps her, his plan finally begins to take shape.
But Ty is not a stereotypical kidnapper and, over time, Gemma comes to see Ty in a new light, a light in which he is something more sensitive. The mysteries of Ty, and the mystery of her new life, start to take hold. She begins to feel something for her kidnapper when he wakes screaming in the night. Over the time spent with her captor, Gemma’s appreciation of him develops into what could be referred to as Stockholm syndrome.

WordVore Prod’s Review:
Wow…one word….WOW! Stolen was such a different read from all the other books I’ve read that it completely blew me away. I’ve always had a soft spot for something that deviates from the regular and this was no exception. It is rightly so that I bestow so much awe upon this book.
Stolen is not your ordinary romance novel brewing from Stockholm syndrome. It is not your ordinary kidnapping cat-and-mouse chase story. Heck, it’s not ordinary, period. Characterization is absolutely unblemished, with no hint of neglect or overdramatization. I was scared—scared I tell you!—by the way Lucy Christopher made me feel sympathy towards Ty, and no, it’s not because he is this perfect prince charming who somehow became a kidnapper out of the blue. He is a guy with major issues like a kidnapper should, and these issues are drawn upon from such a psychological angle that it leaves you enthralled. You do, in fact, feel contempt towards him at times. I had such varying opinions about Ty—so vulnerable and heartwrenching yet so frightening at times. The whole novel, in fact, plays upon the human psych like Mozart played upon his musical instruments. It’ll frazzle you, puzzle you, and it’ll leave you awed at the capacities of psychology. Gemma is not a helpless damsel in distress, in fact, she is strong yet vulnerable at times. Her emotional development throughout the whole novel is so astoundingly well done that it deserves a standing ovation. Her final feelings towards Ty are subtly justified but with strong grounding. At the end of the novel, you actually get why both characters acted the way they did, why they did what they did, and that’s weird since it’s not supposed to make sense but it does. Ah, the wonders of pure good literature.
The plot is holy whoa. I know it’s something you’ve heard before but the plot development and the ending make the story downright unique. Speaking of which, the ending was ama-freakin’-zing. It was one of the best closures I’ll ever see in YA literature, ever. It makes you rethink and re-evaluate everything around you—the world and your life itself. Imagery was wonderful as well—it takes a brush and paints the image right in your head. One thing is for sure, the book communicates extraordinarily well with the conscious AND subconscious mind. The story will make you visit realms of your own mind you’ve never bothered tapping into before. Tell me how many books can do that. The relationship between Ty and Gemma is mindblowing. It’s something you can’t label, ever, yet you know that it’s not flimsy and it’s strong, in a strange yet beautiful way.
Okay, no complaints from me. Strange, right? Of course there are scopes of improvement but I just don’t know where. I think you should rad and be the judge yourself this time.
No other conclusion than: Read! Now!

Labels: Kidnapping, Lucy Christopher, Psychological yummyness, Stockholm's Syndrome, Stolen, WorDissection