Imagine having the same nightmare every day for nine months. In Elizabeth Smart’s case, this nightmare was her new life. My Story reveals how Smart kept faith after being abducted and how to look past the hard times and keep moving forward. At only fourteen years old Elizabeth Smart was taken at night from her bedroom in Salt Lake City. She was forced to climb a steep mountain at four in the morning to her temporary home. After being moved all the way to California, Smart almost gave up hope of ever being found. But many twist and turns will change everyone's fait.
This book made me realize how lucky I am to have the family I have. Many people are not as lucky as I am and after reading about Elizabeth’s experience, I want to help children in similar situations like hers. This book kept me on my toes, and helped me read through the hard parts to see what happens next. Her captor, Brian David Mitchell, was a religious fanatic; and many parts of the book are about his religion. These parts were sometimes hard to read because the level of understanding was higher and sometimes boring. But foreshadowing always kept me reading more.
“Which left me with this: When faced with pain and evil, we have to make a choice.
We can choose to be taken by evil.
Or we can try to embrace the good.” (Pg. 10)
I noticed the author made each choice a different paragraph, making these paragraphs only one sentence each. But by doing this it made me really think about each choice. She used words like “pain” and “evil” which are both powerful words. She puts her advice at the beginning of the book and it makes you want to keep reading to find out how she applied this to her own life.
I would give this book a four out of five rating. This book wasn’t just her telling her experience of this awful event, but HOW she got through it which was very moving. Parts of Mitchell’s religious beliefs were hard to get by, but she would foreshadow big events to come, which made me want to read more. I think this women would be more interested in reading this book because of the emotions and feelings inside. I definitely would recommend reading this book to get a refresher of gratefulness in your life.