hey! that's mine...

stolen.

lucy christopher.

scholastic.

release date: errr sometime in the last year? scholastic's website is like a labrynth... i'm lucky to still be alive.

You saw me before I saw you.

A girl: Gemma, at the airport,
on her way to a family vacation.

You had that look in your eyes.

A guy: Ty, rugged, tan, too old,
oddly familiar, eyes blue as ice.

Like you wanted me.

She steps away. For just a second.
He pays for her drink. And drugs it.

Wanted me for a long time.

He takes her, before she
even knows what's happening.
To sand and heat.
To emptiness and isolation.
To nowhere.
And expects her to love him.

stolen stolen stolen stolen.

oh stolen, i have NO IDEA what to do about you.

i kind of feel better about it if i say it's not a kidnapping book. even though it is.

first off let me just say the book is all of these things: atmospheric, compelling and well written. there's probably more adjectives i can use there, but you get the drift.

i don't think in any way that it is a bad book.

but... ppppphhhhhewwww... okay... i understood where lucy christopher was coming from. ty is an extension of the australian outback, which our protagonist has strong and conflicting feelings about (compelled love and terrified hate). i get that, i do. unfortunately, for me, the result of this was that it actually felt like romance.

i understand the idea of stockholm syndrome, and having never experienced it can only guess at it's effects... but surely the quiet language between the two characters, the completely physicality of gemma's regard for ty is not (for lack of a better word) right. or correct?

and to be honest this all comes from 'feeling' the book, rather than the actions of either gemma or ty. like, if you take it in actions; gemma never stops trying to escape (HOLA! power to the people gemma!) and ty never stops trying to convince her that her place is in the australian outback with him (EVIL ty, EVIL!).

i wonder if maybe she should have just done away with one of the messages? fifty percent of the story's intent was the kidnapping, and the other fifty percent was the exploration of her feelings with the outback. it would have sat a lot better, for me, if these were two books.

i would gladly read two lucy christopher books instead of one. the girl does not make reading a hardship at all. which is where all my confusion sets in. because i don't dislike this book. i'm just... weirded out by this book. but i was compelled to read, to keep reading, to finish gemma's story.

i don't want anyone to feel this is a 'negative' review. because i feel so many contrary things; good, bad and other, for the book to feel negative to me.

best way i can sum everything up: do you ever had an instinct? THAT instinct. when you finish a book, and you feel so many things, but the one that comes through loud and clear is: 'this book wasn't meant to be written like that'. not that it wasn't to be published or never written, but that it wasn't to be THAT book, in this moment, with you as you are, and the book as it is? something is slightly off or different than you know it needs to be.

to end it on a much more positive note: the two separate strands (kidnapping and the outback) were compelling reading... separately (can't stress that one enough).

because when christopher had gemma standing out on that porch looking at the land around her... man that's just what i felt like. it is one of only two times that someone has captured what i see in the australian outback. the other time, for those interested, was a fringe of leaves by patrick white (OH MY GOD DON'T READ IT, IT WILL EFF YOU UP: TRUST ME!). although to be a little more technical: in a fringe of leaves the character gets stranded in south australia... but i digress.

it doesn't take a genius to figure out why - both characters were foreigners getting their first glimpse of something they could never completely comprehend. because truth be told: the outback is so removed from daily reality, and has this ability to be so immense, that you never feel quite comfortable with it.

christopher is one author, in a very short list, that said: here, i know what it is you feel for this barren land.

see. told you it wasn't a negative review.