As a girl, Jack lives with her father and brother after her mother passed away during childbirth. Her father is a well-meaning construction worker who treats her more like a roommate, while her brother, Andy, is an introverted loner prone to violent outbursts, a virtual mirror to his sister who is outspoken to an extreme. The story opens on a sleepover with nine year old Jack and her close … friend. While putting on a pretend show, the two girls leave a video camera running, and when Jack replays the tape the next day, she sees her friend’s toy being snatched off the end table and out the back door by a swift, nearly unseen hand. Excited and bewildered, she tries to show the tape to her thirteen year old brother, Andy who is still furious about the spat he and Jack got into the night before. Without another word, he smashes the tape of the intruder. That night, determined to catch the creature she now calls The Toy Thief, Jack sets up a series of traps, all of which fail miserably. Once she awakens in the middle of the night, she finds her friend’s toy has returned, brought back by The Toy Thief, an impossibly tall and rat-like creature with glassy eyes. Just then, Andy steps out of his room, and as The Thief flees in a panic, Andy realizes his sister is telling the truth. The two of them are able to surmise that The Thief most likely travels through a tangled section of woods called The Trails, and they go out in search of it. After returning unsuccessful, Jack awakes the next morning to find Andy missing from his bedroom. As her father informs the police, Jack knows it’s up to her to find him. Jack must venture into the dark place WHERE TOYS GO to get him back. But even if she finds him, will he ever be the same?FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launching in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.
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This was a new spin on an evil entity(demon) that I really enjoyed! Something that creeps in under the cover of darkness and steals toys from children’s rooms but is also stealing something more!
Jack and Andy lose their childhood innocence one summer when the Toy thief enters Jacks’s house! Jack sees it and is thrust into a horrible fight to save her brother and the very essence that makes him who he is-human! This pulled me along from start to finish, a bit touching at times with the brother and sister thing, and the dynamics of the dysfunctional family’s life. Then add in the terror of most children, things that creep in the dark and you have the recipe for a unique story!
If you’ve followed my reading journey of this book on Goodreads – please ignore it!
I had wanted to read this for some time, and I ended up ordering it in paperback last summer when Flametree Press had their July 4th sale! I ended up reading Wolf Land by Jonathan Janz first, then was going to dive into The Toy Thief. The problem is, I just NEVER have time to read physical releases. I tried and I tried and from October until December, I had only managed to get about 40 pages in.
So, I finally got fed up and purchased the ebook. I started it and due to review books with ASAP coming through, I kept pushing this back and back. Well, finally I prioritized it and once I did, this story flew along.
KR: And then I sat on the review for months so apologies from me too.
This one’s really hard to describe. At its core, it is a coming-of-age horror, but I really kept finding that it read like a truly dark fantasy story and for me that elevated this.
The story is really straight forward. A ten-year-old girl and a thirteen-year-old boy, brother and sister, live with their father. Their mother passed away during childbirth and because of that the boy harbours a lot of anger towards his sister.
One night, when the sister falls asleep in the living room, she wakes when she hears a noise. She watches as their sliding glass door opens and a creature from her nightmares steals a toy.
From there Gillespie takes us on a fantastic ride. A tale that has family dynamics and drama and some of the creepiest scenes I’ve ever read.
I thoroughly enjoyed how each character was first introduced and then slowly morphed. I loved how we find out some information about the creature/character dubbed The Toy Thief, and while I would have loved to learn so much more, by Gillespie keeping some of it close to his chest, it helped to amplify the creature and lets it be capable of anything.
After having read ‘One by One’ and now ‘The Toy Thief,’ Gillespie has cemented himself as a must-read author for me. He’s delivered some of the creepiest, darkest, bleakest scenes I’ve read over the last few years and with how different each story has been delivered, I’m super intrigued to see what’s coming next.
I feel like this might have been an overlooked release from Flametree when it arrived. So if you’ve got this sitting on your TBR, or are intrigued, I highly recommend you snag this one.
Feels like a kid book.