Rating: 2 stars

A sick, sixteen-year-old Cheyenne Wilder is napping in the backseat of her stepmother Danielle’s car. She’s waiting for Danielle to return with her medicine to help her get over her pneumonia, when suddenly someone gets into the driver’s seat and starts the car.

Cheyenne knows this isn’t Danielle from the sound of the car door closing, to the smell and the fast speed of the car Cheyenne quickly comes to the conclusion that she has been carjacked. Cheyenne has no choice to go along for the ride when the carjacker finally realizes she’s in the backseat. Cheyenne has now been kidnapped and frightened beyond belief because she’s also blind.

When Grifffin decided to steal a car for his father, he thought it would be easy as 1-2-3, but he messed up big time. Even when Cheyenne tells him she’s blind and won’t be able to describe him to the police, he doesn’t listen and goes as far as to threaten her with a fake gun to make her behave. When Griffin arrives home where his father is waiting, things have become much worse; not only for Griffin, but for Cheyenne because her father is the president of Nike.

Now Cheyenne is a hostage, and until her father pays the ransom, she’s stuck in the middle of nowhere, having to rely on Griffin for the simplest of needs. Cheyenne is a survivor though. After the car accident that killed her mother and left her blind three years ago, Cheyenne has a strong will to live. She just has to appeal to Griffin to help her escape, in case her father doesn’t hand over the money in time. However, things become even more dangerous for her as her kidnappers grow more unstable.

The first chapter of Girl, Stolen had me hooked. Cheyenne is a very special girl who’s been through a horrible ordeal with losing both a parents and dealing with a handicap that she’ll have for the rest of her life. Unfortunately, Girl, Stolen couldn’t keep my interest and falters half-way through. There just wasn’t enough tension and suspense even with Cheyenne’s kidnapping and her strange relationship of sorts with Griffin. You can definitely sympathize with both Cheyenne and Griffin because of their situations, but I found the writing to be very dull to the point where I didn’t care if Cheyenne was able to outwit her kidnappers.

April Henry missed the mark for me with Girl, Stolen, which even at a little over 200 pages is surprising because you’d think there would be non-stop on the edge of your seat action. There wasn’t. Girl, Stolen gets a pass, and only gets a slightly higher grade because of Cheyenne, who was well rounded, but not enough to make this a recommend read.
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Reading level: Young Adult
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); First Edition edition (September 28, 2010)
ISBN-13: 978-0805090055