Saturday, September 22, 2012

SUNNY: BOOK REVIEW "Stolen" by Shiloh Walker


CHARACTERS:
Shay Morgan
Elliot Winter

SUMMARY:
Shay Morgan is a survivor.  She survives a horrific childhood but not unscathed.  As an adult she survives by limiting her contact with the world, interacting mostly through the books she writes and through the internet.  But that makes her susceptible to identity theft...and that's exactly what happens, someone is trying to take over her life.

Elliot Winter just wants Shay to let him in, to share who she was to understand better why she is almost a recluse.  But the walls that Shay has put around her are impenetrable and that leaves Elliot no choice but to walk away.

Then Shay discovers that someone has been stealing her emails, has fired her literary agent, and is going to bookstores pretending to be her.  Woven into this mystery is the tragedy of her past and how it comes to play in her present.

REVIEW:
One of the things I like about Shiloh Walker is her ability to set a mood. She writes with the uncanny ability to stretch your emotions, especially fear, until you are ready to snap.  She does this masterfully in her Ash series and now again in Stolen.

As a reader, I am pressed with the horror of a stolen identity, how victims can feel helpless as someone takes over their lives.  And as if that isn't scary enough, Shay's life devolves into this murder mystery.

This book is relentlessly dark.  And for me, it was almost too much. In Ms. Walkers' other books, there is always tension, but it is punctuated by bright, tender moments.  In this story, there is hardly any reprieve.

IN A NUTSHELL:
Overall, I can't say I "enjoyed" this book.  It left me exhausted.  However, I will say it was a good read and would recommend it to those who want a highly suspenseful page turner (but be prepared to knead those knots in your shoulders away from the tension).

No comments:

Post a Comment