Stolen by Lesley Pearse

Stolen by Lesley Pearse
Buy Stolen by Lesley Pearse at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Women's Fiction
Reviewer: Karen Inskip-Hayward
Summary: A reasonably good novel, which draws you into the story.
Buy? Maybe	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 416	Date: January 2010
Publisher: Michael Joseph
ISBN: 978-0718152857
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I had heard of Lesley Pearse before reading Stolen and knew my daughter had enjoyed reading her novels, so I was looking forward to reading some of her work, to see if she lived up to the hype!

The story of Stolen is an interesting one. David Mitchell is walking along a beach in Selsey, Sussex in May 2003, when he comes across a young woman – beautiful, half-drowned and barely alive. She is taken to hospital and her photo is featured in the newspapers, as the police hope to discover who she is.

Meanwhile, Dale, a female hairdresser, sees the photo and believes the girl to be Lotte, who she befriended on a cruise they were working on. Along with Dale's colleague Scott – who also knew Lotte – they visit the girl, but she has amnesia and seems to have forgotten almost everything.

David, Dale and Scott are joined by two more of Lotte's friends Simon and Adam, and they rally round to help Lotte, but while they all care for her, someone out there wants her dead. But why? And can it be true that Lotte has had a baby, which is currently missing?

I did enjoy the novel overall. The characters are well-described and the events are intriguing enough to make you want to find out what happens. It is believable and feels a well-researched book with its local flavour of the Sussex coastline.

But it does have its faults. I think the main problem is that the novel is slightly too long at 416 pages. I have no problem with books containing hundreds of pages, but this one felt like it had some sections in purely for padding and not needed.

I felt the story would gain pace and draw you along, only to have a big pause, while something was explained without it needing to be – and this interrupted the flow and cut the tension, so it had to be built up from the start again. I think a good editor could slash this by fifty pages or so and create a much better thriller-drama, which could really be a page-turner – but in this form, it failed somewhat.

I also found Lotte to be rather too goody-goody and sickly-sweet at times. It made it quite hard to like her and some of the descriptions made her seem positively angelic. Her developing romance seemed equally tainted with sugar and this aspect annoyed me somewhat.

I would recommend Stolen if you have enjoyed other novels by Lesley Pearse or if it sounds an interesting novel. I'm pleased I read it, but I won't be dashing out to read another of Lesley Pearse's novels just yet.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.

If you do enjoy Lesley Pearse's novels then we can recommend Gypsy.

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