By Lucy Christopher

Rating: 3.5/5

Three Word Summary: Kidnapped in Australia

I didn’t expect to like this book at all. The premise is not exactly my type — young girl gets kidnapped by charming psychopath and dragged to his isolated home in the Australian desert where she slowly learns to love him and the land they live in.

I’m clearly not the target audience for this decidedly girly, young adult book. I don’t have anything in common with the 16-year-old British protagonist, especially not her circumstances.

I only listened to this book because it came as part of an audiobook package deal with ten other titles from the Humble Bundle audiobook deal. I’m planning on listening to all the books, which range drastically in their genre and subject matter.

But back to this book. It was significantly better than I expected it would be. The writing was good — concise, clear and descriptive. The storyline kept a good pace, mixing in character development with dialogue and action.

However, the best part of the book was the perspective from which it was written. The full title of the book is Stolen: A Letter To My Captor. The entire book is written in first person, but is speaking to her Australian kidnapper. It’s a subtle change, but one I don’t think I ever heard before.

As you can imagine, most of the narrative revolves around the relationship between Gemma and Ty, the captive and the captivator. They have their struggles, she tries to escape, he rescues her from dehydrating in the desert, they catch a camel together.

Which brings me to the next best part of the story — the setting. Much is made of the Australian outback — both it’s beauty and it’s danger. Christopher does a grand job of detailing this barren landscape through the eyes of her characters. The setting as much a character as they are.

But this unusual, inexplicable relationship isn’t Stockholm Syndrome. It’s something much stranger and poetic than that. Ty isn’t exactly the antagonist, despite kidnapping Gemma. And Gemma isn’t exactly a damsel in distress — although she does need the occasional rescuing.

I can’t rate this book extremely highly because I don’t have much common ground with the characters — never having been kidnapped myself. Despite that, I still enjoyed this novel with it’s unorthodox writing style, multi-faceted characters and captivating setting.