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Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2020
320 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
Bestselling author Laurie Faria Stolarz's thrilling novel Jane Anonymous is a revelatory confessional of a seventeen-year-old girl's fight to escape a kidnapper - and her struggles to connect with loved ones and a life that no longer exists.
Seven months.
That's how long I was kept captive.
Locked in a room with a bed, refrigerator, and adjoining bathroom, I was instructed to eat, bathe, and behave. I received meals, laundered clothes, and toiletries through a cat door, never knowing if it was day or night. The last time I saw the face of my abductor was when he dragged me fighting from the trunk of his car. And when I finally escaped, I prayed I'd never see him again.
Now that I'm home, my parents and friends want everything to be like it was before I left. But they don't understand that dining out and shopping trips can't heal what's broken inside me. I barely leave my bedroom. Therapists are clueless and condescending. So I start my own form of therapy―but writing about my experience awakens uncomfortable memories, ones that should've stayed buried. How far will I have to go to uncover the truth of what happened―and will it break me forever?
"[T]he depth of psychological intrigue is absorbing and the twist on the Stockholm syndrome, disturbing...Powerfully graphic." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A story about lingering trauma, loss, and the journey toward healing, this gripping crime novel could be a documentary from the Investigation Discovery channel. A must-read." - School Library Journal
"This engrossing confessional is both heartbreaking and hopeful." - Booklist
"A brave and bold piece of fiction. Jane Anonymous is riveting. It will scare you, intrigue you, and keep you up reading way too late." - C.C. Hunter, New York Times bestselling author
"An engrossingly tense yet tender story that digs deep. Jane Anonymous isn't your average thriller, it's full of heart and determination." - Tiffany D. Jackson, author of Let Me Hear a Rhyme and Monday's Not Coming
"Thrilling, captivating, and compulsively readable." - Leila Sales, author of This Song Will Save Your Life
"A timely, suspenseful tale of trauma and its aftereffects – of how you can never go home again and how the things you remember are just as important as the things you don't. Readers will devour each page like a trail of breadcrumbs left by Stolarz all the way up until the book's twisty end. There is nothing anonymous about Jane – she is all of us." -Tonya Hurley New York Times bestselling author of the ghostgirl series and The Blessed Trilogy.
"It's no surprise that Laurie Faria Stolarz has delivered another taut, potent page-turner, replete with shivers and plenty of twists. But with Jane Anonymous, she ratchets up the tension and digs deep, offering the reader a nuanced reflection on identity, memory, and intimacy that grabs hold and doesn't let go." - Micol Ostow, internationally bestselling author of The Devil and Winnie Flynn and Riverdale: The Day Before
This information about Jane Anonymous was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Laurie Faria Stolarz is the author of several popular young adult novels including the Dark House series, the Touch series, Project 17, Shutter, and Bleed, as well as the bestselling Blue is for Nightmares series. With over a million books sold worldwide, Stolarz's titles have been translated into thirty languages, been named on numerous award lists, including the Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers list and the Top Ten Teen Pick list, both through the American Library Association, and have been optioned for TV.
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