This story played with my beliefs, with my emotions. The slow pace allowed me to savor the story, to soak up this land’s wonders. I touched the soft fur of a camel with long eyelashes and sweet eyes. I learned to see the hidden life of this arid land, to recognize the beauty of a starry night sky. Written in such a way you feel the heat of this dead and thirsty land, I was in Gemma’s head and experienced everything alongside her: her family memories, her fear of Ty, her rage and desperation. Her captor took her in Australia’s Sandy Desert. The sand is everywhere, the heat is scorching and the white light is blinding. Gemma is sixteen and has been kidnapped by a man, Ty, at Bangkok airport while travelling with her parents. ”But what else can I do, other than to plead with you like this? Other than to write down my story, our story, to show you what you’ve done… to make you realize that what you did wasn’t fair, wasn’t right.”

This story has a haunting quality, thanks to the choice the author did to write the book like letters from the girl to her captor. It was not my usual “man kidnap girl” read. You took me to the sand and the heat, the dirt and isolation. You took me away from everything –my parents, my friends, my life. ”What you did to me wasn’t this brilliant thing, like you think it was. I am pleased to say that I loved it as much as the first time and here I am leaving you my “old” review as it translates perfectly what I felt this second time around. When I learned some months ago that Lucy Christopher would finally give us a sequel titled “Released” I ordered the book as soon as possible and… I decided a reread was in order. I was instantly smitten with that gorgeous and unconventional story. I read this book for the first time in 2016. STOLEN is her gripping story of survival, of how she has to come to terms with her living nightmare–or die trying to fight it. The unknowing object of a long obsession, Gemma has been kidnapped by her stalker and brought to the desolate Australian Outback. And before Gemma knows what’s happening, Ty takes her. Ty–rugged, tan, too old, oddly familiar–pays for Gemma’s drink.

She steps away for just a second, to get a cup of coffee. Gemma, 16, is on layover at Bangkok Airport, en route with her parents to a vacation in Vietnam. A stunning debut novel with an intriguing literary hook: written in part as a letter from a victim to her abductor.

Stolen book lucy christopher