You create your own demons.

Book: Stolen: A Letter to My Captor
Author: Lucy Christopher
Rating: 4 out of 5.

“And, let’s face it, you did steal me. But you saved my life, too. And somewhere in the middle, you showed me a place so different and beautiful, I can never get it out of my mind. And I can’t get you out of there, either. You’re stuck in my brain like my own blood vessels.”

Caution: There might be a few spoilers.

I am amazed by how powerful this book is. It was just raw and terrifyingly beautiful. I had a million different reactions during reading it, and there’s just something, something about the way Christopher writes that makes my heart thaw. The plot was unique, the words subtle and meaningful. The characters aren’t hard to love too, for Gemma was both obstinate and strong willed, reacting the way I expected her too. Everything about her made the book seem real. And there’s Ty, oh Ty.

I grew up having mixed beliefs about everything, you know. There’s this side of me that dislikes criminals, but there’s also a side of me that thinks, that maybe, just maybe, there’s a rational explanation why they do the things they do. I think that was the same with Ty. He loved Gemma, so much that he rationally thinks that he’s saving her by taking her away. Stealing her away, thinking that he’d maker her happy. Like Gemma had said:

“What you did to me wasn’t this brilliant thing, like you think it was. You took me away from everything – my parents, my friends, my life. You took me to the sand and the heat, the dirt and isolation. And you expected me to love you. And that’s the hardest bit. Because I did, or at least, I loved something out there. But I hated you too. I can’t forget that.”

And all throughout this book, I was torn between hating and loving him. He was both aggravating and vulnerable, and how, how can I not learn to love him, with the way Christopher crafted him, made him what he is? I tried so hard to hate him, but once learning about his past, I couldn’t help it when my heart started to warm up to him. Not to mention the fact that him and Gem are the only characters in this book, so anyone will obviously end up rooting for them. I actually remembered my mom saying something about people doing crazy, irrational, inane things for love, and my god, my god. Tyler, you broke my heart when you turned yourself in.

If i’m going to associate this book with a song, it’ll be “Stop and Stare” by One Republic:

    Stop and stare
You start to wonder why you're here not there,
And you'd give anything to get what's fair,
But fair ain't really what you need,
Oh, can you see what I see? 

Seriously? I’m starting to hate and love books like this. Books that have icky, taboo subjects, yet couldn’t help it but seem right when I’m reading it. It’s not that it goes against my beliefs–I think that anyone can do what they want to, and I’ll respect them for that–it’s just that, it gives me this hollow, lost feeling, wanting them to not end up together and end up together, like I did so with this book, and Forbidden. I don’t think that I’d be able to get over this book easily.