Review--The Taking by Kimberly Derting

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?

 
Kimberly Derting's The Taking is the first in her newest series and it's definitely not your average read. Instead of the talented teen with special powers to locate dead bodies, we now have aliens and abductions. Except, for now at least, we don't really dwell into that. We focus on the people who were taken...and then returned.

Kyra was taken shortly after an argument with her father. She gets surrounded by a bright white light and then nothing. She wakes up the next day, but soon learns that five years have passed. Everyone was forced to believe that she was dead and gone. And naturally, she discovers that those five years away have changed things drastically.

What can I say about this book that hasn't already been said? It will be tough, but I'll try it anyway. I enjoyed Kyra's character for one. She was a pretty believable teenager. She reacts to being back quite realistically, after learning five years have gone by and all her friends are off at college. Including her boyfriend and best friend as a couple. Although, at times I felt like Kyra could have been nicer to her mother's new husband and her half-brother. Sure, I get that she was upset to learn her parents divorced and not only had her mom remarried, but she had another kid. Thinking of the new kid as a replacement child. I kind of got the feeling that Kyra expected everything to be the same, even after she learned five years have gone by. A lot can happen in five years. Her father changed too, instead of being her fun loving dad and #1 fan, he's turned into a conspiracy nut chasing after mentionings of UFOs and other alien abduction stories.

Then there's Tyler, her ex-boyfriend 's younger brother, only he's not so little anymore. I guess I wasn't too weirded out by the romance. Despite that Kyra should be 21, she still looks 16. In fact, we learn that practically nothing has changed about Kyra. So I didn't see her as a 21 year old, I saw her as a 16 year old. The fact that this isn't really wondered about by her friends and family had me puzzled. Five years go by and Kyra is virtually the same? And no one wonders why? I guess it was due to the shock and joy of her coming back, but still. I'd rather there be more wondering to that factoid.

Instead, I guess I got more weirded out by Tyler and his feelings for Kyra. He had a crush on her when he was 12, five years ago, now Kyra's back and his age! It's like a dream come true! His brother has moved on, so he's no longer in the running for Kyra's heart. That's what skeeved me out a bit. It was like the 12 year old in him finally won Kyra from his brother. BUT that feeling only lasted for a minute or chapter's worth! Tyler ended up being a totally sweet and understanding guy. The way he treated Kyra was just so endearing, he became the light in her otherwise newly dark life.

The first part of the book was a bit slow, this is when Kyra comes back home and basically readjusts to life. There's a few weird happenings every now and then, but not many. The second part of the book is when it finally gets really exciting and fun! The NSA is now after Kyra for she is a Returned. Apparently, her father wasn't so crazy with his beliefs after all. Soon she and Tyler are on the run and they do eventually run into some help from other Returns. But danger is still fast and following!

I can see why some people were unhappy with this book. Not like to every detail, but in a sense at least. I did enjoy this one, was it perfect? Not quite, but it still has a good buildup of adventure and mystery. I'm weird when it comes to alien related things. Sure I loved Roswell and don't even get me started on the Lux series, but I've never really been the Sci-Fi fan. But this was a tremendously awesome read in that sense. We don't get to see any aliens or know anything about them, but I'm hopeful for something down the line, this is after all the first book in the series! And I'm definitely sticking to it!


Overall Rating 4/5 stars