Becky's View: The Taking by Kimberly Derting

The Taking by Kimberly Derting
♦publisher: HarperTeen
♦release date: April 29th, 2014
♦hardcover, 368 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦series: The Taking, book 1
♦source: ARC from publisher for honest review (via SF Book Review)

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?

Review: In The Taking, Kimberly Derting gives us yet another great story full of struggle and romance and the mysterious unknown in her signature relatable writing style that I’ve come to love.   She’s taken a concept that can be precarious to tackle well in fiction and made it fresh---it’s probably the most human alien abduction story I’ve ever come across.

This story very smartly concentrates less on the hows and whys of an unexplainable alien abduction and keeps the focus on Kyra’s struggle to blend back into a life that doesn’t fit anymore.   She’s lost five years in the blink of an eye and hasn’t aged a day.  I was easily drawn into her confusion and hurt as she realized that everything she held dear has changed, her family, her boyfriend, even hopes for her future have all slipped away or changed to the point of being almost unrecognizable.

The love story in this one is not only very sweet, but also a strengthening factor for Kyra.  And not in a way that makes her feel dependent or weak.  It’s actually a bit awkward to begin with; a boy that she last saw as the twelve-year-old brother of her boyfriend is now charming, artistic, and connects with her in ways that his brother never could.  She has a hard time wrapping her head around that at first, of course, and tries to deny their attraction, but well, you can guess how that goes!  Kyra does come across a little angsty at times, especially where her new family situations are concerned but I thought most of her anger and frustration were understandable. She did misdirect some of that at her new little brother, which made it hard to like her at times, but that eventually smoothed out, which I was glad of. 

For me, anything to do with aliens can quickly turn cheesy, but here I think the subject is handled really well.  This IS the start of a new series, and while it touched on the mysterious things going on with government agencies, the sketchy character who claims to be like her, and the strange things that Kyra is discovering about herself after being abducted, there is plenty left wide open to make me curious enough to pick up book two.  It does leave us with a heart-stopping cliffhanger, but I actually loved where the story ended. 

This was one more from this author that I thoroughly enjoyed!

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Purchase The Taking:  Amazon  •   BookDepository  •  Indiebound