Annotation: When Gemma meets a handsome stranger in the Bangkok airport, little does she realize that it's no chance encounter. Whisked away against her will from her family, friends, and everything she knows and loves, Gemma will do anything to get back home. Or will she?
Justification for Rejection: I really expected to love this book. I thought the premise was interesting, if not exactly original. A sorta love story between captive and captor has been done before, but its being set in the barren wastelands of Australia held promise. There must be something interesting afoot.
Unfortunately, I wasn't "captivated". In fact, I was bored. I struggled to finish this book, and only did so that I could reject it for the Mock Printz. Even so, I skimmed over many a paragraph, as I could take only so much description of the landscape. (I'm sure it's beautiful to those who have seen it, though!)
For a kidnapping story, it wasn't very exciting. The first pages of the book held my attention as Gemma described how Ty, her abductor, had managed to steal her away. I was eager to find out exactly why he had gone to so much trouble - what did he have planned for her? I was pretty disappointed to learn that his plan was essentially....nothing. He just wanted her. Oh.
Character development left something to be desired. Peripheral characters - Gemma's parents, and especially Anna and Ben - are largely left unknown to the reader. Because the book is structured as a letter from Gemma to her kidnapper, perhaps this is understandable. However, Gemma herself never feels real, and as a reader I never felt emotionally drawn into her story or had much concern over her fate. Ty was portrayed somewhat more sympathetically, but yet not nearly enough to overcome the horrific way he went about bringing Gemma into his life.
Is this story resonant with teen readers? All in all, I feel like I missed something here. The Printz Award committee clearly found something they liked, but I'm stumped as to what that is.
Genre Category: Printz Award winner; Realistic/Edgy/Problem
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