Review: The Taking by Kimberly Derting

The Taking

(The Taking # 1)

By: Kimberly Derting

Pub. Date: April 29, 2014

Publisher: HarperTeen

Pages: 368

Source: Edelweiss

A flash of white light . . . and then . . . nothing.

When sixteen-year-old Kyra Agnew wakes up behind a Dumpster at the Gas ’n’ Sip, she has no memory of how she got there. With a terrible headache and a major case of déjà vu, she heads home only to discover that five years have passed . . . yet she hasn’t aged a day.

Everything else about Kyra’s old life is different. Her parents are divorced, her boyfriend, Austin, is in college and dating her best friend, and her dad has changed from an uptight neat-freak to a drunken conspiracy theorist who blames her five-year disappearance on little green men.

Confused and lost, Kyra isn’t sure how to move forward unless she uncovers the truth. With Austin gone, she turns to Tyler, Austin’s annoying kid brother, who is now seventeen and who she has a sudden undeniable attraction to. As Tyler and Kyra retrace her steps from the fateful night of her disappearance, they discover strange phenomena that no one can explain, and they begin to wonder if Kyra’s father is not as crazy as he seems. There are others like her who have been taken . . . and returned. Kyra races to find an explanation and reclaim the life she once had, but what if the life she wants back is not her own?

I received this galley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Edelweiss and HarperTeen.

I had the highest hopes for this book. I love Kimberly Derting and the synopsis sounded absolutely amazing. But the story just fell flat to me. While I enjoyed the characters, I didn't feel any connection to them, and I thought the plot was just a little to out there for me (no pun intended).

Within a few pages of the story, Kyra's life is forever changed when she sees a white light and disappears for five years. The reader only gets a few pages of Kyra's life before this. We only meet her dad, best friend, and boyfriend, Austin for a minute and we don't even meet her mom or Tyler, Austin's younger brother, who plays a big part in her life after. This made it hard for me to connect to anyone or to her life before. It made it hard for me to care about what was going on and the changes in her life.

At first, I was really invested in the mystery surrounding what happened to Kyra, but the more I read, the more stupid everything ended up being. I would have liked to learn more about what happened, especially after she met others like her.

My last issue was the relationship between Kyra and Tyler. Before she was "taken" she was madly in love with Austin, but after five years he has moved on and she has to also. But within a matter of days she's madly in love with Tyler. It just didn't feel real to me. While Tyler was so adorable and I liked the two of them together, it just all felt so rushed to me.

I don't think I am going to continue with this series, but I am still a fan of Derting.