Stolen by Lucy Christopher

Around the time when the SRP was due and we were doing our English half-yearlies, I said to myself, "STUFF THIS!" and started reading instead.
Being the nerdy book lover that I am, I shall review one of my new favourite books.

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.

Stolen, by Lucy Christopher, is a book about a girl named Gemma who is kidnapped from an airport and taken to the middle of nowhere, a.k.a the Great Sandy Desert in Australia. Her captor is a guy named Ty (or Tyler) who has problems of his own, and has pretty much been stalking her for years. But he's not quite the type of kidnapper you'd expect.

No, this is not a book about vampires and wolves and fairies and what not. It's a straight up fiction book with a psychological twist. You find yourself starting to sort of sympathise or even like Ty, even though he's this creepy kidnapper guy. It's Stockholm Syndrome, and if you don't know what that is, it's where the kidnapped person starts to feel affection or sympathy for their captor. The book is sort of scary in the sense that as Gemma develops Stockholm Syndrome throughout the book, it's as if you yourself are developing it along with her.

I was a bit wary of the book at the start, because it's in second person and I've never read a good book that's written completely in second person. Also, there are only two main characters in the entire book, but I've come to see that that's actually a good thing because that means you become more attached to those characters. It's not as if Lucy Christopher's writing is extremely flowery. It doesn't make you stand back and go "wow, that is some poetic writing". Her writing is perfectly natural and the book always keeps you hooked.

It also presented Australia in a new light to me. Despite the fact that most of Australia is dry desert, I've never ever seen a desert with my own two eyes. And to have an English author portray it so graphically and beautifully to me was quite an experience.

So if you're looking for a way to evade your studying and procrastinate, I think Stolen is an awesome book. READ IT!

-thelazydreamer