Girl, Stolen - April Henry

Ali Mark
Jan 17, 2016
3 min read

Published in 2010.

Pages: 213.

Number of books by author: 26 Novels.

Genre: Young Adult Fiction

When Cheyenne convinces Danielle to leave the keys hanging in the ignition, she never anticipates that a man will steal the car... with her lying in the backseat. Lucky for Cheyenne, she's blind and she knows how to use it to her advantage. Will her other four senses keep her alive? Or will her blindness hinder her escape plan?

You may like this book if you like the following sub-genres:

Child abduction
Crime family (non-mob/mafia related)
Hero complex

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.97. I think it was more deserving of a 3.00.

I seem to be one of the few people (on Goodreads) who doesn't find this book to be all that it's cracked up to be. I more or less found this book to be annoying. The writing style was so generic - bland, almost. Like eating a cold, dry piece of toast. It was so boring for majority of the book. If I wasn't a curious soul who tries to give each book about 50 pages (which in this case, was a fourth of the book), it probably would've been put down much earlier.

The book just presented a lot of questions for me, I suppose, and they were almost like

"fact-checking" questions. For example, why is the narrator voicing both Cheyenne, and one of the abductors the exact same? It's almost as if Cheyenne and this abductor speak in monotone. The thought processes for each character (at least these two) is identical. It just felt so repetitive - almost as if you were only reading about one person in their own mind, and then presenting the contradicting thought process to better plan their escape. It just got annoying to constantly read through the book with the same information, more or less.

Over half of the book was reflection, on both sides. And while the backgrounds of these two characters were different, the thought process was forcibly the same, and I don't think it's because they have similar present-day stories to share. I wish less of the book was about reflection, or maybe the reflection could've been done from the time in which her life changed, to the abduction rather than starting right at the abduction (which again, was frustrating because I would've like to know why she wanted to sit in the car while Danielle went into the pharmacy when the book started, and not several chapters into it).

If it wasn't for the last 10 chapters or so - which accounts for the last 50 pages or so, I definitely would've been way more disappointed with this book. But these last pages really propelled the story and gave you the action that you expect out of a child-abduction book with these circumstances. I'm sitting here referencing a Criminal Minds episode where in fact this book could've been more than aligned with.

The factual portions of this book - as far as learning about the blind-man's-eye was really interesting. And this may or may not have been what kept me reading through each page because it was just simply interesting to see things from a different perspective. I just wish it would have been prevalent - maybe just more relevant, because I think that information faded out from the beginning of the book where it felt less about the challenges Cheyenne faced.

POTENTIAL SPOILER:

How would the abductor in the beginning be so harsh, so unforgiving to his mistake of stealing a car, and therefore, abducting Cheyenne, yet pages in, become this collapsible individual with excessive care and attention - a paternal effort to keep her safe and maintain her health, if not trying to improve it? It just seems so out of place for this specific abductor.

And why is the last question of the book left unanswered? I think you could learn so much more about Cheyenne and this abductor if the last question, on the last page, was answered. I would've been satisfied because I know the answer would've been 'yes.' I just wish the author would've ended on this note. Because the hero/saved complex is what made the last 10 chapters so powerful; so, why would the answer be anything other than yes? It could've actually helped extend the book into a damn good epilogue.