Monday, April 28, 2014

The Taking by Kimberly Derting

Summary:
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 dĆ©jĆ  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? (from GoodReads)


Review:
I'm huge fan of Kimberly Derting's The Body Finder Series. I think I'm about one book behind but they're so good and creepy! That's why I was so excited to read something new from her. But I didn't enjoy The Taking as much as I thought I would.

I really love the concept of The Taking. Waking up five years in the future with no knowledge of what happened to you would be awful. But that's what happens to Kyra. Even though she's supposed to be 21, she still looks 16 and it's like she never left because she's still wearing her softball uniform. I wanted to know what happened to her while she was gone!

However, it takes almost 200 pages for anything exciting to happen. Beforehand, it's Kyra adjusting to her new life with a stepfather and half-brother. She becomes really friendly with Tyler from across the street, who is her old boyfriend's younger brother. Kimberly Derting writes the romance of The Body Finder series so well and that's what I was expecting out of The Taking. However, Tyler and Kyra fall in love almost immediately and I was a little creeped out by Tyler's obsession with her. I would have liked to see the romance develop more before the "I love you's" are exchanged.

The end of the book gets exciting as Kyra is on the run for her life. I was glad to finally get some answers about Kyra's disappearance too. I still haven't decided if I'm going to continue on because it's obvious this is the first of another series. I enjoyed my read but I guess I'm spoiled by the wonderful Body Finder series because that's the quality I was expecting.

Rating: 7 out of 10.
FTC: won in GoodReads contest
Release Date: April 29, 2014

2014/HarperTeen/368 pages.

1 comment:

We Heart YA said...

Hm, sorry this didn't work for you. Sounds like it had some pacing issues.