Five Stars: The ability to use the readers emotions against them and the unique perspective of a gray area earn this rating
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I simultaneously hated and loved this book, what I thought was going to be a flowery, "no really, he does love me" dominating kind of captor relationship turned out to be a dark glimpse into the desires of the human mind.
"Stolen" is about a girl who is, you guessed it, stolen. Pretty simple right? Hate the creep who takes her and admire her courage, determination, blah, blah.At least, that is how the experience begins.
Ty, an older quiet man, has been following Gemma for years, and he has singled her out as his "target". He abducts her and takes her to live with him in the Australian desert with no hope of escape. Yet, interestingly, he never forces himself on her.
The captor is both clearly delusional and strangely...intelligent and caring in a confusing way, which demonstrates that every human has the capacity for love and insanity. Christopher successfully weaves psychology with a dose of humanism in her work that is beautifully disturbing. The topic is highly controversial and I applaud her for tackling a topic with such grace and I personally believe the typically harshly negative reviews to be unwarranted.
It is also a letter directly to her captor, this unusual point of view is disturbing. The constant use of "you" creates an eerie feeling the the reader is the one she is writing to; the one who took her.
The author isn't excusing this behavior, and instead blatantly sneering at the heroine's behavior, which I thought was extremely brave, and how her brain twists in on itself to form somewhat false perceptions of reality, they will realize that any claims that they would act differently in the same situation are not factually based. It leaves you wondering, is insanity always as a bad thing as most people think? Interesting.
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