Stolen by Vivian Vande Velde

Villagers come to burn a witch out of her house for having stolen a baby from one of the villagers. She manages to escape out the back of her house with the baby and casts a spell to save herself...

A girl is running through the forest. She doesn't know why she's running, or who she is. She stops to try and puzzle it out, but a group of hunting dogs surround her and force her to try and climb a tree to escape. But she isn't strong enough to climb the tree and one of the dogs catches her dress, ripping it, then catches her ankle and bites her leg. This is too much for her, and she falls to the ground and passes out.

When she wakes, she's in a house owned by a female peasant named Avis, her husband, Bromley and their granddaughter, Ravyn. Bromley is the owner of the dogs that brought her down, for which his wife is angry with him. They ask the girl who she is, but she doesn't know, which Avis assumes is the fault of the dog attack. Ravyn, meanwhile, takes it into her head that the girl is a princess, especially when she sees her hands, which are soft and uncallused, but the girl is pretty sure she isn't a princess, and hasn't had people bow to her.

The next day, the girl is able to hobble around, and Avis thinks she may have found her family, the same family as that of the baby that was stolen. Six years earlier, another child was stolen from that family. She would be twelve now, the same age as the girl might be. They call the girl Isabelle and decide she is theirs, even if Isabelle isn't so sure.

Isabelle's family consists of Mady, her husband Frayne, and her sister, Honey. While Mady and Frayne welcome her, Honey is the only one who agrees with Isabelle that she isn't related to them. In fact, she accuses Isabelle of being an imposter who is trying to attatch herself to the family to gain the money and property of Isabelle's namesake, an aunt who inherited great wealth.

But with nowhere else to go, Isabelle decides to stay with them for now, until she can remember who she really is. But when Honey seems to be going out of her way to be nasty to Isabelle and doesn't accept her, Isabelle feels a sense of disquiet. And when Honey apparently starts trying to hurt or kill her... Isabelle wonders why. But can she fend off Honey's attacks and figure out who she really is before she's done away with?

Much of this book's power lies in not knowing who Isabelle (whom the book *calls* Isabelle right from the start) really is. Is she the real Isabelle, torn from her loving family by tragedy and then made to forget who she is? Is she Mady's baby, grown up through the use of a spell? Or is she someone else entirely?

While this is a fairly short book (158 pages, making it more of a novella or novellette than a novel), the tension is well kept up throughout. The book also plays with our conception of the word witch and with the popular image of a witch while turning it inside out and upside down for the story.

The true villain in the piece gets her just deserts, but leavened with a helping of justice, while Isabelle finds out who she really is... but only after having been menaced by the story's villain.

Despite my not liking the story calling the main character "Isabelle" from the start, I did enjoy the book. While it's not a very deep story, it is entertaining, and the mystery of who Isabelle really is keeps readers interested until the true villain is revealed, and finally dealt with. All in all, a fine book that isn't a very long or involved read.