Stolen

Christopher, Lucy. (2010). Stolen [Kindle version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

In this Michael L. Printz Award winning book, sixteen-year-old Gemma Toombs is a privileged kid from London. While traveling to Vietnam for her mother’s work, and on layover in the Bangkok airport, she is kidnapped. She is stolen in the middle of a public place right out from under her parents nose and is brought to an unknown location miles from civilization. She is frightened, angry and confused. While captured, Gemma attempts to balance the human instinct to fight with the situational need of acclamation as an attempt of survival. Gemma tells her story in the form of a letter. Her fast paced nail biting experience of her relationship with Ty, her captor, is thoughtfully told. Could someone who had been so wronged feel emotions other than disgust or hatred for their assailant?  Could a kidnapping turn out to be a blessing in disguise? After being bitten by a poisonous snake, Ty forgoes his freedom to get Gemma help and save her life. His love for her outweighed his desire to keep her. Her views and feelings of their time together are delivered to Ty in jail. Stolen is a unique captivating read. The style in which the book is written would be a great example of diversity of literary writing style and developing well-rounded insightful characters.