The Toy Thief by D.W. Gilliespie
Flame Tree Press (October 18, 2018)
240 pages; $16.48 hardcover; $10.37 paperback; $6.99 e-book
Reviewed by Frank Michaels Errington
To date, I’ve read all but one of the first nine offerings from Flame Tree Press and I’ve been quite impressed with everything thus far. I’ve actually raved about the first seven books, so to experience a hiccough here at book eight is no real surprise.
The Toy Thief is a creepy tale of two siblings and what they encounter over of the course of one summer in their young lives.
To have a sibling, especially a close one, is to have a greatest enemy and a truest friend, but it’s always been like that, hasn’t it?
It was the summer of ’91 when the toys started to disappear. Jack and her older brother, Andy, set out on a quest to learn who or what was responsible. The events are dark and meant to be terrifying, but the story just didn’t work for me.
Do you ever wonder how things just seem to vanish from your house even though you knew where they were? Maybe a pack of batteries shows up missing, even though you knew exactly where you put them? It might have been the Toy Thief.
I may have mentioned before, I’m mostly an analog kind of reader; same way with film and TV. Too much bouncing around in a story and I start to lose interest. Nothing inherently wrong with the technique, and sometimes it works for me, but this was not one of those times.
This is my first time reading anything by D.W. Gillespie and I like the book well enough to read his work again, should the occasion arise. In the end, I just can’t get excited enough to recommend The Toy Thief.
