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    The Stolen Child
    The Stolen Child
    The Stolen Child
    Ebook350 pages4 hours

    The Stolen Child

    By Sanjida Kay

    4/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Zoe and Ollie Morley tried for years to have a baby and couldn't. They turned to adoption and their dreams came true when they were approved to adopt a little girl from birth. They named her Evie. Seven years later, the family has moved to Yorkshire and grown in number: a wonderful surprise in the form of baby Ben. As a working mum it's not easy for Zoe, but life is good. But then Evie begins to receive letters and gifts. The sender claims to be her birth father.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtlantic Books
    Release dateApr 6, 2017
    ISBN9781782396932
    The Stolen Child

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    Reviews for The Stolen Child

    4/5

    9 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      "Who is my real Daddy."This was an excellent psychological thriller that kept me wanting to know more. I was listening to the audiobook and the narration by Helen Johns was excellent too. It is well paced and convincing, with good dialogue; the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was that the police didn't seem to do much, nearly all the discoveries that led to the denouement, were made by Zoe Morley, the Mum, which seemed just a little too coincidental.Zoe and Ollie had adopted baby Evie from a drug addicted young mother. And, as sometimes happens in such cases, several years later, they were able to have a child of their own, who they named Ben. They are content with their young family and life is good. Then Zoe discovers that seven-year-old Evie, has been receiving gifts and cards signed 'Your loving Daddy'. He declares his undying love for Evie and promises to come and rescue her from her 'fake parents'. As Evie struggles to come to terms with the fact that she is adopted and her brother, Ben, is not, the thought of having one of her 'real' parents back becomes more and more tantalising.I thought early on that I knew who Evie's father was, but I'm glad to say there were many more surprises and possible culprits along the way and the ending managed to take me by surprise.Set in Yorkshire, in and around the Ilkley Moors, this novel has a brooding atmosphere and I loved that Zoe uses this to inspire her art.I am looking forward to reading Sanjida Kay's earlier novel, Bone to Bone, which also seems to have been well received.Recommended, and the audio is good too.
    • 4/5
      I was a big fan of Sanjida Kay's first book, Bone by Bone, which was such an insightful and empathetic read that I couldn't wait to get my hands on her second novel, The Stolen Child. It centres around Zoe and Ollie Morley and their two children, Evie and Ben. We know from the beginning that Evie is not their biological child but Ben is, that often miracle child that comes along when all hope has been lost. It's not hard to imagine that Evie, as the adopted child, might feel as though Ben is the important child in the family, even though she is incredibly loved by her parents and treated just the same.Evie starts receiving gifts purporting to be from her real father. At a time when she's questioning her place in the family, the consequences of this are huge.This is an unsettling read with lots of tension. Being set on and around Ilkley Moor it is incredibly atmospheric and the wide-open spaces and being out on the moor, open to the elements, are integral to the feeling of underlying menace. Zoe gets involved with somebody who is very intense and the author manipulated my feelings really well when it came to that person. I liked them, then I didn't like them, then I was scared of them. In fact, I felt just the same as Zoe did and I think Kay put me as a reader right into the heart of the story.The title is a clever one. Without giving too much away, it can be seen from two angles: did the Morleys steal Evie from her real parents or are the biological parents about to steal her away from the only family she has ever known?I must admit that the twist did cross my mind but I semi-dismissed it because I couldn't see how it could work. It's certainly a clever one and as psychological thrillers go this is definitely up there with the best of them. Sanjida Kay is an accomplished writer. Her books are very much about the trials and tribulations of family life and how easily stability can be ruined in favour of turmoil and upheaval. The Stolen Child puts her right up there with the other authors whose books I will look forward to reading in the future.
    • 3/5
      After many years of trying unsuccessfully to have a baby, Zoe and Ollie Morley apply to adopt a child. When they are approved to adopt a little girl from birth they feel that their dreams have come true. The baby, whom they call Evie, is born prematurely and, mainly because she was suffering from foetal alcohol syndrome, a legacy of her mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy, she needs to spend weeks in intensive care before Zoe and Oliver can take her home. However, they soon fall in love with her and are determined to deal with whatever problems their new daughter might face in the future. Following this introduction, the story moves on seven years. The family has moved from London to Yorkshire where they are living in a house on the edge of Ilkley Moor; a new addition is two-year-old Ben, a naturally conceived and much loved “surprise”. They appear to be a perfect family but all is not as it seems. Although Zoe loves both her children, she is feeling unsupported and neglected by Ollie, who is working longer and longer hours, leaving her feeling like a single-parent. She is an artist, eager to complete a series of paintings for an exhibition but is unable to focus on her work as much as she would like to. She is also finding Evie, an imaginative, creative and rather intense little girl, difficult to get through to. Her daughter is acting in an increasingly disturbed and secretive way; is she just jealous of her younger brother or is something else worrying her? When Zoe finds a card hidden in the hollow of a tree in the garden, addressed to her daughter and with the writer claiming to be Evie’s birth father, she becomes very fearful. He is promising to rescue Evie from her “fake” family, claiming that they cannot possibly love her as much as he does. Zoe is shocked and realises that the security of her family is in real danger. Her fears increase when she discovers that Evie has received previous cards and gifts from him but had hidden them. Although Ollie does seem to be concerned that the birth father has somehow discovered where they live, Zoe still feels unsupported, believing that his work remains his priority. Then Evie is abducted and blame and recriminations surface in a dramatic way as the parents try to deal with their disintegrating relationship as they search for their missing daughter.This is a dark psychological thriller which taps into every parent’s nightmare about their child being abducted but with the additional fear faced by adoptive parents, that the birth parents will find track them down and reclaim their biological child. There were moments when the descriptions of the range of emotions experienced by the parents, especially Zoe, felt almost unbearable, and when the ever-increasing tension almost took my breath away. On the other hand, there were times when I found some of the scenarios described less than credible – particularly one when Evie appeared in a “princess” fancy dress costume which Zoe hadn’t bought for her and yet she didn’t insist on questioning where her daughter had got it from! However, for the most part I was convinced by the multi-layered plotting, even though I sometimes found the pacing a little uneven. I thought that the author convincingly captured the way in which everyone comes under suspicion when a child goes missing, even the closest of friends and family, and how relationships are so easily fractured in such traumatic and stressful situations. The ways in which Evie’s thoughts and feelings about why her birth parents had “abandoned” her, whether the love of her biological father would, automatically, be stronger than that of her adoptive parents, whether Zoe and Ollie loved Ben, their “real” child, more than they did her, all felt psychologically convincing. I admired the way in which the author captured the way in which Zoe and Oliver’s relationship was slowly unravelling as the story progressed and how Zoe’s search for psychological support led to her to making some unwise and irrational decisions as she struggled to reconcile her wish to be a good parent with her needs to express herself artistically. Although there were moments when I felt like shaking almost every one of the characters and often found it difficult to like any of them, they were all convincingly drawn. I loved the descriptions of Ilkley Moor, an area I know well, and thought that the often dark and foreboding nature of the moor, especially in bad weather, was very dramatically evoked; it became almost like an extra character in the ever-darkening story. Although the plotting is full of twists and turns, and one red-herring after another, by about half way through the story I had guessed who the perpetrator was. However, although I was right, there was a clever twist at the end which meant that there was still a surprise in store for me! The range of issues in this novel would make it a good choice for reading groups – I’m sure it would provoke some diverse opinions about relationships and modern parenting!

    Book preview

    The Stolen Child - Sanjida Kay

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