Book Title: The Taking (The Taking #1)
Author: Kimberly Derting
Release Date: April 29th, 2014
Publisher: HarperTeen
Genre: YA.SciFi
Series: Book 1 in The Taking trilogy
Book Link: Goodreads
Synopsis from Goodreads:
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?
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?
Diclaimer: I received this e-ARC from HarperTeen via Edelweiss in exchange for my honest review.
Review:
Normally alien/SciFi like this really is not my thing. I am very picky about my SciFi but when I saw it on Edelweiss awhile back, I considered it. Even at the end of 2013 I wasn't totally sold on it but I knew I wanted to expand my horizons book wise. So a couple of days ago, after my blogger friend Andi had bugged me for what seemed like the thousandth time, I picked it up and I devoured it.
Sixteen year old Kyra has everything a teenager could want. She's got a doting boyfriend, parents who love her and love each other and she's a rising softball star. Things change abruptly after a fight with her father after a softball game. The fight was over college and her plans to go to college in the fall with Austin, the aforementioned doting boyfriend.
A blinding white light changes everything.
When she comes to, she initially believes that she just fell asleep behind a dumpster. Strange yes, but what is even stranger is the world she finds waiting for her. She learns that it has been 5 years since anyone last saw her. Yet she hasn't aged a day. Everything is different now. Her parents are divorced, Austin is away at college and in love with Kyra's longtime best friend Cat.
And Austin's brother Tyler has grown up.
Now I am really not a fan of the whole insta-love thing. It just doesn't make sense to me. Insta-love doesn't exist. Insta-lust definitely does and normally I would have labeled the thing between Tyler & Kyra as insta-lust but somehow I didn't mind it. I rooted hard for Kyra & Tyler. There are so many swoony scenes for the both of them, but my favorite involves sidewalk chalk and a birdcage.
I loved this book. I loved the characters so hard and so much. I do hope that we see more of Simon & Willow in the next book because I really did like them. When Kyra begins to accept that maybe her father isn't as crazy as her mother says he is, there's an absolutely heartbreaking scene between Kyra and her mom. Her mom who used to be her best friend. I had a hard time with that scene because I kept thinking of my own relationship with my mom.
I love books that are full of twists and turns and this book definitely brought that. In addition it also brought the feels in a big way. I was a wreck at the end of the book and it took me several minutes to calm myself down and stop crying. Derting combines, SciFi, Romance, and Contemporary all into one book. That is so hard to do and Derting did it. Not only did she do it, she did it amazingly. Even if you aren't really into SciFi or if you are picky about it like I am, read this book. You will not be sorry. I am giving this book 5 stars and I cannot wait to see what happens next in this trilogy.
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