A Stolen Life

A Stolen Life, A Memoir
Jaycee Dugard
273 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Source: paperbackswap.com
★★★★☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

You can't say you loved this book.  You might give it four or five stars like you would a piece of fiction you loved, but you can't love this book.  It's just gut-wrenching what this girl, now woman, had to endure starting at the age of eleven when she was abducted.  She was held captive by a pedophile for eighteen years, produced two daughters by him, and had only very small glimpses of the outside world.

A Stolen Life was eye-opening about what happened to Jaycee - a story I remember seeing on TV when I was little, and then more recently when she was found.  It was written haltingly because Jaycee has only a fifth grade education, but once I got used to her "voice" it became an enthralling page-turner for me.  Jaycee is a great storyteller and I think she could be a great author if she wanted to be.  I know this book was hard for her to write, she says so in it, and I'm so proud of her for getting her story out there and using it as therapy.

The little extras in the book really helped illustrate Jaycee's story.  There were pictures from her childhood, pictures of her daughters when they were little, as well as copies of her personal diary entries from two separate times during her captivity.

If you remember seeing this story on the news and ever wondered what happened to Jaycee, I highly recommend this book.  Frightening as it may be to read, it was definitely worth it.