"Stolen" by Lucy Christopher

Sometimes nothing will do but a re-read of a much loved book. Even though you know the story and the characters, some books are so special that you can read them again and again and still find something interesting, new or fascinating in them while at the same time the known provides a certain comfort. Last weekend I needed that comfort so I snuggled under the duvet with one of my favourite YA reads, "Stolen" by Lucy Christopher. 

The story is an unusual one. Gemma is a lucky 16-year-old girl. She lives in a wealthy part of London with her financier father and art dealer mother and it is a pretty easy life until one day, it is all taken away from her. She's travelling to Vietnam on vacation with her family, when she meets a handsome young man in Bangkok Airport. He buys her a cup of coffee and suddenly everything is blurred. Next thing she knows, Gemma is in the Australian outback, hundreds of miles from the nearest city, far away from her family and friends. The only one there is Ty, the young man who has abducted her. Why he has taken Gemma and what he wants from her is a mystery to her and is slowly revealed to both her and the reader. 

This is YA as it should be. Powerful, convincing, different and realistic. There's no paranormal romance here, yet it has some of the same qualities. As with many paranormals, this is set in a world very different to the one you and I live in and the rules are completely different. It is realistic yet it has the same magic as a good paranormal romance would have and it will appeal to the same readers. 

What is interesting is that even though there are only really two characters in the plot, it still feels dynamic and full of action with lots of interesting dialogue. These two main characters are well-written and come to live, their personalities spring out of the pages, so real are they. The work that Lucy Christopher has done on her protagonist Gemma and the difficult Ty means that this novel is classes above many of the other YA books on the market. It is simply of a different - and better - quality and so much more interesting and powerful. 

The story is scary, worrying, while at the same time being gripping and sorrow-ful. The way that Gemma matures throughout the book is rarely seen in the genre and it makes her a good literary role model for teenage girls. It reminds me of Sophie McKenzie's "Girl, Missing" but this one is better written with a more believable plot and more engaging characters. So if you're wondering what to get your teenage daughter/niece/friend for Christmas, I'd say that "Stolen" is a good contender for a great present. 

Read it if: You like intelligent, emotionally mature Young Adult literature with a twist. 

Top Ten Tuesday: Reading them again for the first time...

This Tuesday, The Broke and The Bookish ask us to think about this topic in our Top Ten:

There are just some books that leave you with such deep, intense feeling when you finish it for the first time. We've all experienced this at one time or another. The bad thing is, there's really no way we can go back and experience that feeling again, even with multiple rereadings. We already know what happens, if there are plot twists, a surprise ending, who the main characters ends up with , who dies, etc. Here are some books that leave me (Kelly) with these feelings of longing.

So here is my Top Ten of Books that I Would LIke To Read Again For The First Time...

10) "The Liar of Umbria" by Bjarne Reuter
Not sure this was ever translated to English which is a shame because it is a really really really amazing book.

9) Peter Pan and Wendy by J. M. Barrie.
One of the children's books that have most effectively captured my imagination. Such a wonderful book. Full of adventure and heartbreak.



8) "Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins.
I expected so little and got so much. I read the book right around Christmas time last year and it was a really amazing experience because I got so sucked into it.



7) "Stolen" by Lucy Christopher
The development of the stolen girl's Stockholm Syndrome and the changes in the relationship between captured and hunter had me completely enthralled. Loved the unpredictable parts of this story and loved the ending.

6) "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas
I love both the villains and the heros of this story. They are all so vain, so selfish and so lacking in the self-awareness department - have loved it since I was a girl and wish I could remember the first time I read it.



5) The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini
So beauty and such emotional turmoil. On amazon.com they write: "Episodic and essentially plotless, but propelled by an inner tension..." and I definitely got caught up in that tension.

4) "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" by Christiane F.
The biography of a teenage heroin addict and prostitute in the Berlin of the 1990's. I was in a depressed state for days after first reading this when I was 13 years old. It was the first book that made me realize that it is up to us to take control of our lives and decide how we want to live it. A very very scary and emotional read.

3) "New Moon" and "Eclipse" by Stephenie Meyer
I long for the days when these were books that hardly anyone talked about and that didn't have people divided in lovers and haters. Because honestly I was completely addicted to these two. "Twilight" not so much but these two had me in a state of being where nothing else mattered except from Bella, Edward and Jacob. I miss the innocence of those days, before the movies and the R-Patz/K-Stew mania.

2)"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen
I saw the BBC series before I read the book. Big mistake. Wish it was the other way around. LOVE this book, it really is one of the greatest love stories ever. And oh how I long for that first feeling of intense worry that Darcy and Elizabeth wouldn't have their happy ever after.

1) The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
Booking a week of vacation and spending the entire week reading all of the Harry Potter books in a row for the first time is more or less my idea of perfect bookish bliss. I loved being part of the HP adventure, lining up outside bookstores at midnight to get my hands on the newest book and I loved the sense of being a muggle, lucky to catch a glimpse of the magical world of Hogwarts.

Review: "The Collector" - Obsessions

I had actually read this book before but I didn't realise it until I had read quite far and in the end it didn't matter because I couldn't remember anything about it anyway. That is one of the very few perks of having a bad memory - you get to re-experience great books and films over and over again.

"The Collector" by John Fowles is a great novel - his debut which I find extremely impressing. The narrator Frederick, who calls himself Ferninand, is damaged at best and outright crazy at worst. He is a 25-year-old orphan who has grown up in a loveless home with this aunt and cousin but who comes into a large amount of money when he wins at pools. Frederick is obsessed with Miranda, a 20-year-old art student from North London. Miranda is obsessed as well but not with Frederick whom she hardly notices. She is obsessed with being bohemian, arty, leaving her middle-class background behind and becoming part of the world that she adores and which is symbolized for her by G.P., an libertine and artist old enough to be her father.
However, Miranda comes face to face with Frederick's obsession with her and with love when she is kidnapped by him and imprisoned in his basement somewhere in the English countryside.

As the days go by Miranda and her captor circle each other in little power games where Miranda always has the upper hand except for the fact that Frederick literally has the key to her freedom and denies her the use of it.
What does Frederick/Ferdinand want from Miranda? She wonders and the reader wonders as well. I think Frederik himself wonders. He collects butterflies and Miranda is the triumph in his collection. He doesn't want anything from her except to have her.

It is a fascinating read because both Miranda and Frederick call for pity even though both of them are really quite annoying and caught up in their own webs of self-deceit. The story is more reminiscent of the plot in Lucy Christopher's "Stolen" which is like a YA version of "The Collector" than of "Room" by Emma Donoghue. However, all three books deal with the same topic, kidnapping, in a way that is worth reading.

"The Collector" is great. It is a piece of classic literary fiction and it deserves your attention.