Stolen: A Letter to My Captor by Lucy
Christopher
Genre: Contemporary, Y/A
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: A Letter to My
Captor follows the story of 16 year old Gemma, who is kidnapped from Bangkok
airport on her way home to the United Kingdom.
‘You saw me before I saw you’
Coming from Australia, I
really loved reading a novel set in my own country. It’s not often you find
books set in Australia, let alone the Australian Outback. The author’s knowledge
of Indigenous Australian culture also added a nice touch to the novel.
I really loved Gemma as a
character, she was strong and realistic, and although she grows to understand
and even care for Ty, she knows what he did was very wrong. I never grew
annoyed by her and I feel that she handled the whole situation exceedingly well,
considering what she must have been going through.
‘The people we care for aren't always the one we should’
‘it's hard to hate someone once you understand them’
Ty is the anti-hero of this
story. He kidnaps Gemma and forces her to live if the dry and extremely hot Australian
Desert. Yet while it is clearly a terrible thing that he has done, you can’t
help but feel for Ty, and throughout the course of the novel, grow to love him
as well.
Stolen
is written in the form of a letter that Gemma has written to Ty. I found this a
very unique and interesting concept and felt that it perfectly suited the
novel. I love Lucy Christopher’s writing style and if her other novels are
anything like this one; I’ll definitely be picking them up!
This story deals with a tough topic (kidnapping) but also touches upon the effects that todays society has on people and how we are all conforming to live a certain way.
As this is something that really interest me, it made the story all the more intriguing and i found Ty's point of view accurate in some ways, despite the drastic measures he resorts to, to achieve his desired way of life.
Overall I highly enjoyed this
novel and it has become one of my favourites of all time! I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys Y/A contemporary novels.
'Right then, and at every moment since you’d left me,
all I could think about was you. I wanted you in that apartment. I wanted your
arms around me, your face close to mine. I wanted your smell. And I knew I
couldn’t—shouldn’t—have it. That’s what I hated most. The uncertainty of you.
You’d kidnapped me, put my life in danger … but I loved you, too.'
