Summary
The Cellar, by Natasha Preston, is about a girl named Summer who gets kidnapped by a man named Colin for seven months. Colin has built a house-like room in his cellar in which he keeps Summer, who has been renamed Lily, and three other girls (Rose, Poppy, and Violet) to be his “family”. While trapped in the cellar Lily has to play along and pretend to be a perfect wife with the other girls. During this time Violet attacks Colin and gets killed, to replace Violet he kidnaps another girl. The girls have to deal with Colin raping them, murdering prostitutes, sudden anger outbursts, and obsession with cleaning and neatness. Lily’s family and boyfriend, Lewis, make a search party and the whole community joins in, including Colin. However Lewis feels Colin is
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Jennifer was desperate to leave and was in the cellar for six months. Layal (Violet): Towards the end of the book Colin replaces Jennifer with Layal. She tries to fight him on her second day there but gets wounded. Layal keeps getting hurt by Colin until she dies in the hospital when Colin stabbed her.
Major Conflict In The Cellar, Summer gets kidnaped by Colin while looking for her friend in a party. Colin leads her to the cellar where the other girls calm her down. Summer has no access to the outside world and they are completely dependent on Colin. Throughout the book she has to survive by being part of the perfected family Colin keeps in his cellar.
Theme/Moral
In The Cellar, Colin has a regular job and seems to be completely normal, despite the fact that he hides a terrible secret and an awful past. The moral of this story is that appearances are deceiving. Colin is not ordinary, he is affected by his past when his mother was mentally abusive towards him because of her cheating husband. He started killing prostitutes and protected his “family” from the corruptive world.
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