YALSA 2021 Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee
YALSA 2021 Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers
YALSA 2021 Amazing Audiobooks Nominee
TLA 2021 TAYSHAS Pick
2022 MASL Gateway Readers Award Nominee
2021 South Carolina Young Adult Book Award Nominee
New England Book Awards 2020 Finalist
Kirkus 2020 Best Young Adult Books of the Year
"Stolarz ups the psychological ante...the depth of psychological intrigue is absorbing, and the twist on Stockholm syndrome disturbing...this novel is a testament to how the mind can reshape reality in order to survive...Powerfully graphic." - Kirkus, 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
"Jane Anonymous is equal parts terrifying and heartbreaking. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’m STILL thinking about it." —Stacey Kade, author of Finding Felicity and The Ghost and the Goth
"Jane Anonymous is a haunting, horrifying tale I won't soon forget. Jane grabbed me from the first page and still refuses to let go." - Cyn Balog, Author of Alone and That Night
11/01/2019
Gr 10 Up—Seventeen-year-old "Jane" was popping into work for a last-minute gift when she was abducted. Held in captivity for seven months, Jane was fed through a cat door, instructed to bathe and keep her room clean, and given stars for good behavior. Then Jane met and developed a deeply emotional attachment to fellow captive Mason, who visited while sneaking through the air ducts. But when Jane finally escaped and sent the police back after Mason, he was nowhere to be found. Jane is back home with her family now, but she left part of herself behind. As she works to readjust to life outside of confinement, difficult memories begin to surface, and Jane isn't sure she wants to know the truth. Alternating between events Then and Now—during captivity and the present—Jane tells her story as an attempt at therapy. The teen's struggle is at the center of the plot and includes believable coping mechanisms, realistic depictions of panic attacks, and detailed descriptions of her confinement, but the work does touch on the suffering of side characters as well. Knowing from the beginning that she survives her ordeal allows readers to focus on the details of Jane's captivity and recovery. Though this close examination may lead some readers to decipher the work's conclusion beforehand, the ending is no less compelling because of it. VERDICT 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.—Maggie Mason Smith, Clemson University, SC
★ 2019-09-29
An abducted teen recounts her harrowing captivity.
Stolarz (Shutter, 2016, etc.) ups the psychological ante by crafting a confessional narrative in which her 17-year-old protagonist is taken and held for months against her will. Gutsy first-person narrator "Jane Anonymous" tells her story by alternating between two troubling presents. "THEN" details the moments leading up to and including her gripping "seven months away" while "NOW" tells what has happened since her escape to the "girl who sleeps in her closet with a knife tucked beneath her pillow, trusting no one but herself." Though the cast of characters—from Jane's abductor to Jane, her family, and friends—exhibits a blanched, generic, suburban quality, the depth of psychological intrigue is absorbing and the twist on the Stockholm syndrome, disturbing. Jane's probing monologue while captive details both the mental and physical coping mechanisms she developed and convincingly displays her unwitting realizations, such as her heightened sensory awareness borne of being confined. But Jane's return also clearly shows the fallout of her torment—not only for her, but for those who care about her as well, demonstrating just how far life is from being back to how it was before she was taken and prompting Jane to wonder if her shattered psyche will always be "far beyond repair." This novel is a testament to how the mind can reshape reality in order to survive. Main characters are white.
Powerfully graphic. (Fiction. 12-18)
Nothing is more chilling than our worst fears becoming a reality, but surviving the aftermath is the other half of an often untold battle. Emily Bauer’s narration transports listeners inside the mind of a teenage girl who is going by the alias “Jane” as she recounts how she was kidnapped by a stranger at work and how she survived her capture, which lasted several months. After her rescue, Jane writes about her experience as a form of therapy as she begins to withdraw from past relationships with friends and family. Bauer skillfully establishes an emotional connection between Jane and listeners as she describes her trials of mental endurance, but the real gem of this performance is Jane’s struggle as she tries to re-enter society. G.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Nothing is more chilling than our worst fears becoming a reality, but surviving the aftermath is the other half of an often untold battle. Emily Bauer’s narration transports listeners inside the mind of a teenage girl who is going by the alias “Jane” as she recounts how she was kidnapped by a stranger at work and how she survived her capture, which lasted several months. After her rescue, Jane writes about her experience as a form of therapy as she begins to withdraw from past relationships with friends and family. Bauer skillfully establishes an emotional connection between Jane and listeners as she describes her trials of mental endurance, but the real gem of this performance is Jane’s struggle as she tries to re-enter society. G.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine