Book Review: Stolen by Lucy Christopher.

Product details:
Publisher: Chicken House Ltd.
Paperback, 320 pages.
Release date: May 4th 2009 (UK)
Rating: 3 out of 5.

Product description from Goodreads:

Sixteen year old Gemma is kidnapped from Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian Outback. This wild and desolate landscape becomes almost a character in the book, so vividly is it described. Ty, her captor, is no stereotype. He is young, fit and completely gorgeous. This new life in the wilderness has been years in the planning. He loves only her, wants only her. Under the hot glare of the Australian sun, cut off from the world outside, can the force of his love make Gemma love him back? The story takes the form of a letter, written by Gemma to Ty, reflecting on those strange and disturbing months in the outback. Months when the lines between love and obsession, and love and dependency, blur until they don't exist - almost. 

I’d heard a lot of good things about this book, but I have to say,  it fell a little flat for me. First off, I did not find the storyline or the characters compelling.  The premise of the book was good and sounded very exciting, but in reality the story was very repetitive and slow moving.    It’s written in the form of a letter, and mostly features two characters in the Australian outback, where not a whole lot happens. Both the characters and the narrative style were not enough to keep me entertained. The setting of the Australian outback was also unappealing to me.  Christopher has obviously done her research here but to me the long vivid descriptions of plant and animal life in the Australian desert just seemed boring.  I found myself skim-reading certain passages, something I rarely do.

I generally love books where I really get to know the characters, and as a character study, this book could have been great, but the characters lacked depth and description for me, and I didn‘t connect with either Ty or Gemma.  Gemma has been kidnapped, taken away from everything she knows and loves, and yet, I didn’t really feel sorry for her.  I found her to be annoying for the most part, when surely I should have had a lot of sympathy for her plight.  I felt that Christopher wanted the reader to feel some sympathy towards Ty, though , and to this effect there are many descriptions of how good-looking he is, how he loves Gemma and would never hurt her, and how he has abducted her for her own good.  This just didn’t work for me.  The guy has been stalking the girl since she was ten.  I did not have any sympathetic feelings towards him whatsoever.

 All that said, the book does have it’s good points.  The story started off well, and I enjoyed the flashbacks to Gemma’s previous life in London, which to me, were far more interesting than the bulk of the story.  Despite the fact that this book wasn’t for me, I liked Christopher’s writing style for the most part, and I would check out future releases from her.