UGH I WANT TO BATHE IN THIS BOOK'S MORAL AMBIGUITY. 
 I'm trying to be cool about this you guys. This book definitely won my favorite contemporary YA book of 2013. I read this a while ago, but unlike the other books I review months later, I remember everything. This was a goddamn masterpiece and I loved every page. 
 This book, for some reason took me a while to find a copy of, increasing my desire to read it in a way that the outcome may have been disappointing. Nope. So goddamn good. So fantastic. So real. 
 I JUST FUCKING LOVE MORAL GRAY AREAS YOU GUYS. 
 Stockholm syndrome or true love? As a girl raised loving Beauty and the Beast, I get the romance angle of this book, though I would never classify this book as a romance novel. Not really. That would actually be quite horrifying if anyone thought this was a relationship worth envying. The emotional bond between Gemma and Ty is so fucking complicated. 
 This is genre I love, and one we don't get often in YA books: two lost people trapped in the same location and just have to deal with their shit together, minimal locations, no throwaway characters, little plot beyond personal growth and a few questions of morality. This is a bare-bones story we rarely get in teen fiction. There is such so much gristle to contemporary YA, and this book is so sparing: in it's slender page count, minimal set-up, and quiet, ambiguous ending. There's no waste. It's a simple book tackling one theme, the result of such an extreme case and it's affect on a developing teenage mind. By being such a distinct kidnapping case, it eases readers into thinking about their feelings, sympathy for the kidnapper, the horror of the victim, and Gemma's conflict and sense of loss. We aren't supposed to blindly love and forgive Ty for his actions, but we are left understanding he was messed up in his own way and he did love Gemma. He just didn't love her the right way,but he was incapable of that. I can never say anything definitive about Ty. I really can't, because he's such a special case. Honestly, I'd read a 400-page book spanning a lifetime of their relationship, because there are so many dynamic feelings and the mood-swings would last Gemma forever, the character is always changing and growing, or taking the easy emotional way out, denial, as a coping mechanism. 
 So the choice between Love or Stockholm Syndrome isn't important. It's both. The reader feels just as conflicted and lost as Gemma in the end, grappling with her instincts to defend Ty, recoiling from the sharpness of the real world, and resenting everything taken from her. She can't assimilate to her old life, so she wants to go back with Ty, but Ty made her foreign to it in the first place. Ty also sacrificed everything for her, so she feels she owes something to her captor. Ambiguity. Mmm. So sweet. 
 This is a thoughtful book, a quiet read, and one that lingers. It is so poignant and strong, without trying to be funny or heartbreaking or preachy. It just offers up this complex relationship and leaves it there, with the reader conflicted and pensive as Gemma would be at the end of the road. 
 A definite recommendation to any of my friends.