Stolen Away by Alyxandra Harvey

17 years of a normal life, a single moment to change it all.

Eloise Hart always thought of herself as a normal teenager, but when a troop of cruel and twisted faeries kidnap her for the single purpose of using her as bait, she has no idea what to do.
Kept in a strange world with mythical creatures for company, Eloise is the prisoner of the power hungry and tyrannical King Strahan.

Strahan's wife, turns out to be Antonia, Eloise's aunt who's always been a little different always mysteriously disappearing for half the year and returning for the other. Antonia alone is the only one who can end Strahan's cruel reign. But when she too is captured, the mission rests in Eloise's hands and it's up to her to defeat Strahan, the fate of Courts depend on her.

----o_O-------

My blurbie thing
Ok. let us turn to reviewing shall we?

Alyxandra Harvey manages to write a quick and flowing tale with love, and action as well as a healthy dose of magic.

First, let me comment on how pretty the cover is? Isn't it just gorgeous? The alternate cover is one that is equally eye-catching. **sigh** pretty pretty...

The book itself is written from 2 perspectives, one is Eloise's and the other is viewed from her best friend Jo's. I quite liked this idea because the two views gave the book a lot more freedom to change course, we could see what was happening to both parties as well as their thoughts and feelings. It was also very clever because the two personalities are so different from each other, again more variety.
Although the name of who it is the story is being written from is displayed before each chapter, I admit, I am a dork, and still got confused. :) But afterwards it's easy to pick up on who the character is because of their style of speech of just from where they left off.

The characters in Stolen away are all very well developed, you pick up different bits and pieces about them over time. Eloise, the protagonist of the book as expected, is a very different character. She isn't loud in a sense that she's outspoken or confident which could be interpreted as shyness and I suppose she is a little, but you also realise she's actually bold in her own way. She expresses herself through her appearance, her dress style mostly. As the book progresses you also realise that Eloise is also very kind as well as selfless, trying to help others almost to the point of hurting herself.

Jo, the other perspective is very different from Eloise, but they're alike in their fierceness and loyalty. Jo, I found was a very expressive character, she's quirky and funny and a complete and utter flirt. It's rather amusing. What I found though, is that this was her weakness. I mean honestly, she goes running after complete strangers. It's a wonder she wasn't kidnapped ages ago. But she's very protective of her friends almost to the point of threatening to physically harm others
ha, the joy.
Along with such admirable traits, Jo also has an obsession with English slang, using or rather trying, to incorporate the words into her everyday language. Once again, highly amusing

Stolen Away is a very engaging tale, the plot was good, the characters as well, but I found some things just far too convenient and completely random.

**Spoiler Alert**

When Eloise communicates with Jo by saying her name whilst holding the necklace. what on earth?!? It's just so rushed, and it was a complete and utter accident. It just doesn't make sense, it would have been better if they communicated via messenger pigeons or something. at least that would have made sense (actually I don't think it would, but that's beside the point). What I'm trying to say is that there should have been some sort of lead up to the communicating via necklace thing, say I don't know... one of the faeries helped her or whatnot. It doesn't make sense for her to just happen to stumble upon such a thing and learn to harness it's powers (now I'm just being melodramatic) without and help and it's not even explained properly.

**end spolier-ish**

And calm. **breathe**
Phew. Now I shall go onto ranting about the love interests. Jo and Eldric are my main concern. They meet, they kiss and in a grand total of about 3-4 days, they declare their undying love for each other.
Need I say more?

The ending though was one that made me hold my breath, it was action packed almost as if Alyxandra Harvey were saving up her awesomeness to unleash it upon us, leaving us spellbound and begging for more.
Yep.

After having read Stolen Away, I'll definitely have to read Alyxandra's other series.
:)