My Review
The Gift is the fifth short story in the Amazon Original Stories Hush collection, which features short mysteries and thrillers that are designed to keep you on the edge of your seat while you read through each installment in one sitting. That’s one of the reasons I have been loving these short stories so much – I can usually read through a short story without being interrupted by anything, since most of them tend to be under forty pages or so.
“Lyla takes a deep breath – the last one she’ll be able to take for a long time. ‘What does this problem concern?’ she says.
‘Your daughter, Fidelity,’ he says. ‘It appears she’s gone missing.'”
The Gift by Alison Gaylin follows actress Lyla and her actor husband, Nolan. The two of them live a high-profile lifestyle, and they often aren’t home to care for their eight year old daughter as often as they would like to be, so they have a nanny that helps to care for her.
“What is acting, she wonders, other than lying?
And what is lying other than a way to survive?”
However, one day Lyla and Nolan’s daughter goes missing from school, Lyla and Nolan spring into action to locate her – even going as far as to hire a psychic to try and find their daughter. However, Lyla does not think that there is any way that this man could possibly know where their daughter is – he has to be a fraud, right?
Or wrong?
“I don’t want to know the truth. I never want to know the truth. But the truth finds me. And it won’t leave me alone…”
Even more frightening is the fact that this man may know more than Lyla wants him to know.
The cover of this short story is beautiful!! I absolutely love looking at this one!
While The Gift wasn’t my favorite in the series, because I didn’t find it quite as memorable as some of the others, I did find myself enjoying it. In fact, I read through it rather quickly, because I was invested in the story while it was happening.
That being said, I didn’t really connect to the characters – I thought they seemed strange toward each other, almost as though the chemistry between them was forced.
The message, or plot of the story, really sent chills down my spine, though. It doesn’t matter how much money you have – when tragedy strikes, you can’t buy a fix to it. Especially when it involves one of your children.
This is really short, and has quite the twist at the end, so I’m not going to talk too much about it.
If you like psychological thrillers, this isn’t one to be missed!
