Stolen: A Letter to My Captor was a taxing read. This book was recommended to me by my close friend, Maria when I asked her for some dark books, and this definitely delivered.

Lucy Christopher is the author of several books, including Flyaway, The Killing Woods, Three Strikes, Storm-Wake, Shadow, and her newest text, The Queen on Our Corner. Christopher is a striking example of a writer who can write in various genres and for a variety of audiences. Her novels range from children ages 3-5 to teen to adult, and while they are all fiction narratives, they range from thriller to mystery to horror. She is most known for Stolen, which has won the Branford Boase Award and the Gold Inky Award, both in 2010.

The novel follows the kidnapping of Gemma, a 17-year-old London native, by Ty, a 24-year-old wanderer from Australia who isn’t exactly a stranger.

— Warning, the rest of this post contains detailed spoilers. —

At the Bangkok airport, while Gemma’s family waits by the gate to board to return to London, Gemma decides to get a coffee when she “meets” Ty, who offers to pay for her coffee. Gemma sits at a table nearby while Ty, a stranger (to her understanding at this moment), prepares her coffee. Ty, who has been watching Gemma for years, already has an intricate plan in place. While pouring milk and sugar into her coffee, he also drugs her. Gemma takes a sip, and the plot speeds up immediately.

Suddenly the two are whisking their way through the airport. Ty manages to convince a drugged Gemma to change her clothes and put on a wig. He loads her into a trunk and drugs her several more times to keep her asleep before they arrive in quite literally, the middle of nowhere, also known as the Great Sandy Desert in the Australian Outback.

The description of how Ty manages to kidnap a 17-year-old from one of the most secure places on the planet is a frisson. It is as though I was a bystander watching Gemma being whisked through the airport. The imagery and description that Christopher uses pull the reader directly into the scene to the point where you feel as though you are in an airport watching this happen but can’t help. It’s incredibly frustrating but makes you want to keep reading because you just have to know what happens to Gemma when she finally wakes up in Australia.

Once Gemma comes to, the following 100 pages or so of the story follow the low and extreme lows of the first fifteen days of her capture. Around day sixteen, Gemma begins to sort of understand that she is stuck and, even worse, dependent on her captor for survival. Christopher uses paradoxes and extended metaphors that I believe are actually used to highlight Gemma’s road to Stockholm syndrome.

One of the moments that continues to stick with me even after finishing this book is Gemma’s experience watching Ty capture a camel.

About 21 days after her kidnapping, Ty plans to find a camel for transportation and eventually meat. When they spot a herd, he puts his plan into motion, speeding up the truck and yelling to Gemma to grab a pole and rope. Ty yells, “I’m going for the young female” (Christopher 135). After successfully separating the young camel from her herd, Ty jumps from the truck and begins tying her up. As he’s working, he says to the camel, “You’re dreaming if you think you’re going to get away, girl” (Christopher 139). Once tied to the truck, Gemma describes her wish to set the camel free. Gemma speaks to the camel, asking the camel to take them both back to her herd. She meets the eyes of the camel and sighs, saying, “You’re trapped, too, now” (Christopher 139). What amazes and scares me at this moment is Gemma’s sort of acceptance of both her and the camel’s fate. At that moment, Gemma could have set the camel free, and the fact that she didn’t, to me, seems like an indication of the acceptance of her own fate as another captive of Ty’s.

Like Gemma, Ty tried to be nice to the camel after capturing it. Speaking softly, calling the camel sweet names like “pretty girl.” And like Gemma, the camel does, eventually, start to accept its new reality.

After Gemma’s fear of Ty subsides, she begins to ask him questions of essentially why her. Over time, Ty eventually explains that he has been “watching over her” since she was 10. Gemma finds his actions extremely disturbing until Ty describes an evening where Josh, a friend of Gemma’s, got too drunk at night at the park and wouldn’t accept no for an answer. As Gemma describes running through the park to escape Josh, she remembers a tall figure pushing Josh away from her. She didn’t stay to find out who it was, but as Ty tells her, it was him. Suddenly, Ty wasn’t a monster who kidnapped her randomly, but a kind of “guardian angel” who had been there all along. And if that isn’t bad enough, Ty confesses that the night he saved her from Josh’s attack was also “the moment I first knew I wanted you… the moment I knew I had to bring you here” (Christopher 151).

Further into the narrative, Gemma begins exploring the home Ty built. She finds several books, including a botanical guide to Australia. She has the idea that if she could locate the plants near her, she might be able to find out where in Australia she was and, by default, the nearest towns nearby. During her exploration of the home, she also located a sewing machine, whose needle she took for protection.

Gemma manages to get close enough to Ty to hold the sewing needle to his eye. When doing so, she demands his truck keys and suddenly zooms off to his car to escape. Ty doesn’t immediately chase after her, as this isn’t the first time she’s tried to escape, but this time she had his truck. Gemma manages to get the truck started and drives away from Ty. But only miles away, the truck’s tires get stuck in the sand, and she is forced to walk.

Gemma doesn’t get far before she collapses from heat exhaustion and begins hallucinating that she is at home, cozy under her duvet. I have to say it is these moments of incoherence that bring tears to my eyes for Gemma. Here she is kidnapped, brought to the middle of nowhere, and when she finally escapes, she is stopped by the heat. I admire Gemma for not completely losing her shit. For a 17-year-old, she holds herself and the entire plot together. Her strength is simply unmatched.

After she collapses into the sand, it doesn’t take long before Ty finds her by tracking her footsteps in the sand. When she wakes up, she is hugely sunburned and bruised but finds Ty diligently and gently taking care of her.

Gemma notes how nice Ty was to her after that ordeal, and as a reader, it seemed his gentleness had a sweet effect on her as well. This feeling seems to intensify after Gemma finds Ty in the middle of a nightmare. She awakes to him, screaming and crying, “Don’t take me!” Finally, he wakes up and thanks Gemma for helping him.

At this point in the story, Gemma’s feelings towards Ty start to grow and become more evident to both him and herself. When Ty is adding the finishing touches to his painting, which he himself is a part of, Gemma helps him paint his back and even lets him paint her face a bit. That same night, Gemma and Ty laid out in the sand and watched the stars. He tells her about the patterns in the sky, and before we know it, Gemma is lying on his chest. She describes herself listening to his voice like a lullaby as she drifts to sleep in his arms.

The story begins climbing towards its climax the following day when Gemma wakes up alone and finds a note from Ty that reads, “Gone to catch a snake” (Christopher 237). Gemma, now in full Stockholm mode, lightly walks the ground looking for Ty. She describes a yearning for the heat of his body, the warmth of his arms, and the safety of another person. She finds him in the process of capturing a poisonous snake, and just as he is about to catch it, the snake turns its attention to Gemma and quickly goes after her. In what seems to take a few pages to explain, Gemma is bitten by the snake and before long, she is lying on the kitchen table with a makeshift IV in her arm and Ty trying his best to keep the poison from spreading.

The narrative moves rapidly from here. After Gemma begins to feel symptoms of the snake’s venom, Ty makes the gutwrenching decision to take her to the mine site for professional treatment. It’s a complete ordeal to get there, but once they arrive, Gemma is quickly taken in. As the clinical staff is trying to separate Ty from Gemma, he says goodbye to her, and she shakes her head no. Just as she is taken away from Ty, she grabs onto his arm and pulls him down to the hospital bed, and kisses him.

As they pull Gemma’s bed away to a restricted area, she watches the staff crowd surround Ty. The jig is up.

When Gemma comes to, she is greeted by her parents and siblings, who are happy she was found alive and in one piece. In the last 30 or so pages of the novel, Christopher briefly gives us a taste of Ty’s fate ahead. He is arrested and, of course, charged. The police have video evidence from the airport, and now they have Gemma to give a star testimony.

In the last entires of her letters to Ty, Gemma describes being conflicted over her upcoming testimony. Should she say she planned this with you or tell the truth that you stole her?

In the end, Gemma decides to tell the truth, the whole truth. That Ty has been watching her since she was ten, and he did steal and drug her from the Bangkok airport. But she also plans to tell them how he never touched her inappropriately and his gentleness towards the camel.

In the last pages of the narrative, she tells Ty she hopes her testimony will get him sent to a prison near a window or near his land, but she cannot save him the way he wants her to.

I can’t say enough how happy I was to read that Gemma doesn’t choose to save Ty. But I also would be lying if I didn’t also add that I wish there were a part two to this novel. Even though there are no “lose ends,” I couldn’t help but feel left in the wind by the ending.

Does Gemma get over her Stockholm syndrome?

Does Ty ever get out of jail?

I have so many questions.

This book was so hard to put down because of its organizational style. It’s written in journal format with only small dividers separating the entities, further enticing the reader to continue.
I would recommend this book for those looking for a dark read that isn’t too dark. It’s appropriate for young adults and older teens.

Thank you for reading,