The Bookaholic Cat

This is going to be one of those hard to review books/audiobooks. The thing is that STOLEN is almost two different books or a book broken in two parts… And I liked one part more than the other. The first part wasn’t bad, it started interesting enough, but soon, it was too good to be true and at the end, it was. The problem is I was already bored with the perfection of it when things changed. I can’t say more without giving spoilers away. Let’s just say the second part shows us something different from the first part, something that makes more sense with the circumstances to which Cayla is exposed and a reality that I enjoyed more because it was more believable. My only problem with the second part was the end. It was simply too perfectly convenient to be plausible. 

I liked Cayla as a heroine. She is young, but she is smart. I liked how she grows throughout the story and how it was clear that she is a survivor at heart who is willing to do anything in her power to remain alive.

I can’t talk about the secondary characters without giving spoilers away. So I’ll just say they are all interesting and so well written they made me experience strong emotions. 

I also can’t give much away about the story because there are some surprises that should be discover by the reader/listener. What I can say is that there was a twist that really surprised me, and I liked when an author surprises me. 

The world building lacks a bit of development. We know crime families now rule (at least that part of the world), but we don’t know much about them and the little we know is about the Lucretias family. We don’t know anything about the other families because they are not addressed. We also don’t know about what is going on outside of the Lucretias’ mansion. We know there is a Rebellion forming, but we don’t know anything about it. I wish I could have known more about the outside world.

The end, although not a cliffhanger, is kind of an open end. I don’t know if Windsor is planning to write more books in this world, if that were the case I would read/listen to them. 

This is the second audiobook narrated by Andrea Emmes that I listen. She is really good doing voices that fit each character’s personality and with them she brings the story to life.