The world we are living in today is scary. People are killed for all sorts of reasons, they do things that many of us would find psychotic and, to be frank, really freaking creepy.

People are also taken from the lives that they live everyday for even more reasons. Whether those reasons be hatred, jealousy, an overwhelming need to “possess” that person, or love. It’s really hard to imagine why someone would do that to another person.

In 2009, “Stolen: A Letter to My Captor” by Lucy Christopher provided a look into why someone would kidnap another in this piece of realistic fiction. The story is about 16-year-old Gemma and what happens to her after she is taken from the Bangkok airport.

The story is written as a letter to Ty, Gemma’s captor, after living with him for a long period of time in the Australian Outback. This was Lucy Christopher’s debut novel, which was written for her doctorate’s degree before becoming a young adult novel.

I can honestly say that I am happy that this book was released into the public instead of just being apart of her degree. This is a very well written story with great detail that really makes me wonder where Lucy Christopher got the inspiration.

One of the nice things about reading this book is that the events that Gemma describes are not obscene or extremely traumatic.

Now, I am not saying that being taken to the middle of no where to live with a guy you don’t know just because he thinks he is in love with you and never wants to let you go is not a traumatic event, but what I am saying is that as far as Gemma’s situation goes, I imagined something a lot worse when I first picked up this book.

The character wasn’t sexually assaulted, her captor provided her with enough food and water, treated the few wounds she did receive, and wasn’t chained to anything.

Even though getting kidnapped is a horrible and truly traumatic situation, I think if it was myself in the situation, what happened to Gemma sounds fairly ideal.

This is a fairly light book about a really heavy subject and I think Lucy Christopher did a wonderful job with every detail that she put into this tale.