Review: Stolen: A Letter to My Captor by Lucy Christopher

Stolen: A Letter to My Captor by Lucy Christopher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

5/5 stars. The most beautiful story I have ever read.

"Lets face it, you did steal me. But you saved my life too. And somewhere in the middle, you showed me a place so different and beautiful, I can never get it out of my mind. And I can't get you out of there either. You're stuck in my brain like my own blood vessels."

I love stories that are emotionally draining. Where the reader is unsure of her/his feelings about a character. We generally tend to see the world in terms of black and white. We see the good and the bad. The good mostly. We turn our backs to the bad until and unless it affects us. But in reality the world exists in grey, so do the people.

This story has three protagonists: Gemma the victim, Ty the abductor and Sandy the desert.

Ty is an extremely broken and vulnerable person who has been defeated by life. He does not know how to cope up with his life and tries to somehow exist but unsuccessfully until the day he meets his guardian angel: ten year old Gemma. Ty believes that meeting Gemma was a sign in his life that he had to try for himself. He could not just give up his life because he it was his turn to become the guardian angel to his saviour Gemma. Sandy, the great Australian desert was very near to Ty's heart. When everyone had turned their backs on him Sandy helped him to survive. He wanted to introduce Sandy to Gemma and show her what life could be life outside the bustling city where there was only pain and sadness. Gemma is reluctant at first because she has been kidnapped but later she realizes the significance of Sandy in their life. She starts loving Ty but is told later by her shrink after her rescue that the feeling she thought was love was nothing but Stockholm Syndrome.

I loved Gemma. She is so strong, so brave. Being a sixteen-year old she is so intelligent. She does not give in her situation. She strives to fight. There is the major contrast between her character and Ty's. Ty easily accepted defeat but Gemma does not. I am not sure of my feelings for Ty. At times I felt like punching him and at times I felt like hugging him and saying to him that everything was alright. Whatever his way may be his love for Gemma was true. But his method of expressing it wrong. I understand that he has seen enough in his life but he had no right to kidnap Gemma. Love cannot be bought and when love turns to obsession it kills the sweetness of love.

I understood that Gemma was a little unhappy in her life but her life was not that terrible that she needed saving. To be entirely uprooted from her teenager life and be taken to some place new. Gemma needed a friend, somebody to love her. Not somebody to take away her freedom. I wish that the circumstances of Ty meeting Gemma would have been different. I would have loved to see them together. Both so strong yet so vulnerable. But when I finished the book I knew I did not want them to be together. The time they spent together was one of a lifetime but of them needed their respective healing. I wanted Ty to realize his mistake and have a separate life. I did't want him to suffer. I wanted Gemma to go back to her life and this time try to find people who truly matter in life. I read on the author Lucy Christopher blog that she had built up the sequel to this book but was yet to write it. If that book truly come out I will definitely read it. I need to know what happens.

Another thing I loved about the book was the camel. How it had been shown in parallel to Gemma's life. How the camel had been stolen in the same way that Gemma had been. How it had rebelled in the beginning and later learned to love Ty. Maybe it had Stockholm Syndrome too. :p

The story is beautiful and my review can never give it justice. It is a story that will stay in my heart forever and readers need to read it to understand.

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