My Books

I can't decide whether I should give this 3 or 4 stars. Right now, it's at 3.5.

I was a little hesitant about reading Stolen, what with it being about a teenager being abducted, buy now I realise I needn't have worried much. It was, in my opinion, fairly tame and at times not very realistic.

I can understand Ty's 'I love you and am obsessed with you let me take care of you' attitude and personality, because why else would he have kidnapped Gemma and thought he was doing the right thing if he didn't want, what he thought was, the best for her? What I don't understand - or particularly like- is how normal he was and how well he treated Gemma. I expect people so crazily obsessed with others to be at least a little unstable. Mood swings, random acts of violence, forcing the captive to do things they don't want to do etc etc.

Ty didn't act like that.

In fact, he even offered to let Gemma go. Not something I could see happening in the real world. If he was so madly in love with her and obsessed with her (and I mean, he was pretty obsessed. Watching her since she was 10? Creeper alert.) he wouldn't have agreed to set her free.

Gemma's attitude to the whole situation surprised me, too. I was expecting a lot more crying and pleading to be taken home from her, as well as more escape attempts and lashing out at Ty whenever he came close.

Sure, Ty seems nice enough and maybe looks quite good, but he's still the guy that abducted you.

I understand captives can develop Stockholm Syndrome, and I was waiting for Gemma to. Except, when she did, it felt... off. I didn't believe it was Stockholm Syndrome. It didn't feel like she felt sorry for him or understood him, it just felt like bad romance to me. Like the author had gone 'I want to include Stockholm Syndromes to make it believable. I know, I'll have her suddenly fall in love with him for no apparent reason'. I don't really know how to explain how I feel about it, other than I felt it wasn't handled well and was poorly done.

Despite the characters not always being believable, I did enjoy Stolen. The writing was good, the story was interesting and I found, once I'd read a few pages, things flowed and I was able to read it fairly quickly.

What I would have really liked to see though, is proper chapters. Ones that start at the top of the page, have a number or title and are a set length (or there about). Not the sections that could either be pages and pages or just a few lines long. That really bugged me because it made finding a place to take a break a little difficult.

I found that it didn't really read like a letter, either. In a way, I'm glad it didn't because it meant we got to see more of the story and the setting etc. I felt like Stolen was Gemma remembering her time with Ty, maybe even talking to him as she remembered and voicing all the thoughts and questions she never got to share while she was kidnapped. Whatever it was, it wasn't the letter I was expecting.

Annoyances aside, Stolen is a good book. Like I said: it flows, it's interesting and I found it to be a good way for teen and young adult readers to break into 'heavy' subject matter. Sure, the captor/captive thing could have been done better, but it wasn't as gruesome as I know some more adult books are likely to be.

And that's perfect if you haven't read anything like Stolen before. It doesn't scare you away from the subject, it leave you wanting more.