Taken by Norah McClintock (reviewed by Alanna Cover)

Stephanie Rawls is a normal girl with an average girl. She is the daughter of a widowed woman who hasn't understood her for a long time, she has good friends that worry about her, and a goofy and annoying stepfather.

When reports of missing girls come closer to their town, many people lock up, terrified of whatever monster there might be out there that is killing these girls and burying them nearby. But Stephanie is skeptical about these reports, and believes, as many of us would, that it could never (I mean, absolutely NEVER!!) happen to her. But she is VERY wrong. Because one night while walking home from her average weekend shopping trip with her best friend, she is caught from behind and knocked out with some kind of drug injected into her arm.

She wakes up, tied ankle to wrists, and begins her freaking out stage. When she pulls herself together, she finds an outcropping of nail in the wall and cuts herself free. Taking what she can from the empty little abandoned shack that she was placed in, she runs into the endless woods. Taking sight of a far off town, she uses her survival skills her grandfather taught her to get there.

Except for many problems along the way which include a horrifying fear that whoever it was will come after her, hunger, dehydration, a heavy cold, and a badly sprained ankle. She's terrified that she won't get help soon enough, or that she'll die along the way. Eating what is under the bark of birch trees, she gets along as well as she can without a stove or any other food.

One morning, the day after she fell into a hole and sprained her ankle, she runs into a bear. Almost literally, too! It runs after her, and she knows that she's dead, she won't make it to safety because she cannot run, until a gunshot sounds loudly. Is it the man? The man is gruff to her, but kind. Finally, she believes that he's not the serial killer. This man is a ranger named Zeke. He carries her to a nearby cabin which is residence to a police officer named Les Adruksen. Les informs her parents, and she gets checked out and questioned, and she is sent home.

And then something weird starts to happen. She still has the chain which she pulled from the man's neck. And Gregg, her stepfather who is a slob, leaves some really messy clothes in the bathroom the night she gets home. His socks are muddy, the collar of his shirt is bloody, and his pants aren't too pretty either. She dismisses it at first. But then, she looks at his running log (he does these runs to get more money, getting to machines and emptying the money from them and coming back with what he has, it's not much, but it helps him get by.) and on the days that the girls before her were taken, his running logs went for a day or two. On the day that she went missing, the log was also a longer period of time. She makes some calls, and finds that he was late to the call he was supposed to make the day she was gone.

She calls the officer immediately. They have the chain, and ask questions on the necklace her mother gave him. It turns out it was the chain around his neck, and he is taken into interrogation.

Gregg kidnapped her.

Unfortunately, he wasn't the serial killer. He had used the instances with the other two girls her age to make it seem like it wasn't him who had kidnapped Stephanie. He just wanted Stephanie's mother and his relationship to start from scratch, without her daughter in the way, like they had first met. He is put in jail. Stephanie's mother vows never to date anyone else (Which, honestly, is a little rash.) and Stephanie vows never to walk home alone at night.

This was an amazing story of courage and fear. The thing that will always be in my mind is the rules she went by: Give up or go on.

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Wow, Alanna, that sounds like a complete page turner and too scary to read alone at night! ^__^ Thanks for the review!

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