Synopsis:
It happened like this. I was stolen from an airport. Taken from everything I knew, everything I was used to. Taken to sand and heat, dirt and danger. And he expected me to love him.
This is my story.
A letter from nowhere.
Sixteen year old Gemma is kidnapped from Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian Outback. This wild and desolate landscape becomes almost a character in the book, so vividly is it described. Ty, her captor, is no stereotype. He is young, fit and completely gorgeous. This new life in the wilderness has been years in the planning. He loves only her, wants only her. Under the hot glare of the Australian sun, cut off from the world outside, can the force of his love make Gemma love him back?
The story takes the form of a letter, written by Gemma to Ty, reflecting on those strange and disturbing months in the outback. Months when the lines between love and obsession, and love and dependency, blur until they don't exist - almost.
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I'll start off by saying that when I first picked up this book, I really, really, honestly didn't think I was going to like it but boy was I wrong - it was beautifully written, it really connected with me as a reader and the ending just broke my heart. I'm usually not one for kidnapping books, just because I've never seen of the appeal about them but for some reason I decided to pick up this book and I can't be more happy that I did. The first time I read it, I honestly didn't know what to think ; I was equally parts horrified and amazed, I think from the book? Till now I'm not quite sure how to describe it, it's a reading experience that is singularly exceptional.
I'll delve right into the plot. So basically the book starts off with the main character, Gemma. She's a sixteen year old English girl who's in the airport, and gets kidnapped by Ty (I'll get to him in just a second) Initially I didn't like Gemma, she seemed like a very flat character with just nothing that really jumped out at you but as the book went further and further on, she became more and more relatable to me and I think that's what really drew me in the second time I read it. She's a fantastically well-developed character, with every bit of the struggles a sixteen- year old teenager faces.
Then comes in Ty. I'd say out of the two characters, Ty would have to be my favourite. I love that he's conflicted with himself and struggles to find himself, yet is so sure in the fact that he loves Gemma and would even go so far as to kidnap her. The book is centered around the idea of Stockholm Syndrome, and if you looked at it on the surface, it would look like the story of Gemma falling in love with her captor, Ty as time goes on. But if you look deeper, you'd see it is more than that - it's not just about how she falls in love with Ty, but it's about her struggle to understand him, about how she starts to question her life before Ty took her away, struggling with herself because in the end, she loves him even though she knows he was wrong.
The lines blur between the relationship of a captor and a victim to the one between two people who love each other. She loves him, yet struggles with herself because she knows it's wrong to love him, that she should be disgusted, but she can't help herself. I think that's my favourite part of the novel - the way she struggles with herself, trying to reason with the wrongness that she feels about loving Ty, yet is helpless to change her feelings otherwise.
This book was written in the form of a letter and a recount, which I have to say isn't really the usual type of style that I prefer but it surprised me how much the writing style of the book added to the structure. It wouldn't have been the same if it were in first person, because you really get to see the essence of the book; Gemma's struggle with her inner emotions, her initial desperation to run away from Ty to how she gradually accepts him.
That brings me back to the ending, which basically broke my heart in seventeen thousand ways in every direction, simply put. Let's take this step by step. (Spoiler Alert! If you haven't read the book yet, don't read this part. Skip to the next paragraph. Trust me on this one :)) Gemma gets bitten by a poisonous snake, and Ty tries to save her with some anti-venom he stored away but it ends up not working, leaving him with a dilemma: give her more anti-venom and wait it out, or bring her to the nearby mining community so that she can get help, effectively giving her up. Basically, he decides to bring her back to civilisation to save her, and towards the end when they're rolling her into the hospital and he has the chance to escape but Gemma reaches out for his hand and he still stays, despite knowing what consequence it will have for him.
The book draws to a close with Gemma explaining that it was the day before his trial, and was sort of trying to find closure to the incident. And in a way she did, and it was so real, and so relatable that I absolutely loved it. It's one of those books that really messes up your brains and makes it go left right and center thinking about it, and in the end you're still not completely sure what just went on but you know that you loved it anyway.
It was definitely a very complex and intense read and while it may be hard to take the first time round, just stick with it. Read it once, twice more times and it'll grow on you. It's not one of those with a clearly happily ever after fairytale ending, nor is it one of those that answers all your questions about the book at the very end. But I promise - it's worth it!
