Review: The Taking

The Taking
Author:  Kimberly Derting

Publication Date: April 29th 2014        
~A copy was provided by HarperTeen  and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review~

 

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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.

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You know what's really annoying with this? I read it back in March and I still don't know if I actually liked it or not. But, I do know that I just...didn't feel it. Which is weird, right? Since it's (spoiler (about alien abductions)) ) you'd think I'd be all over that. I was, when it was to do with that part, but it wasn't a lot of it. And that's the problem, for a huge chunk of it, it could've been an contemporary mystery or thriller and you wouldn't have known the difference. There was no balanced pace either, the beginning started off fast and dropped you right into it, and while I do like when you're dropped into the middle of things, there was no time to get attached to it, which led to a whiny ass character.Like I said, where dropped into it, but while you were told a little about Kyra, her boyfriend who she's soooo in love with, her best friend and suddenly with a flash of light were five years later and everything has changed.

And I didn't care.

As Kyra readjusts to her new life- It was slow going for a while, while it started really fast before you had a chance to get to see Kyra's life, family, boyfriend, friends, connections before it was all gone. -Her old one is only half buried, her parents are divorced, her boyfriends off in college and doing all the things they were going to do together, with her best friend. It's a shitty thing to do. It is. I'm not saying it's not. But, the more Kyra whined about it, and pitied herself and was all but it's not fair! About everything I just wanted her to. shut. up.

So I guess you could say....  I also had a major problem with the way Kyra acted.

Mainly the way she acted with her family, more specifically her Mother and her baby brother. I get it, I do. For her nothing has changed, but for them five years has passed and no matter how hard it was, they had to move on. It's hard on her yes, but she wasn't even trying. You can't expect everyone to noy move on with their lives, it's just how it works. And shouldn't she be happy that they're happy? That though it tore her parents apart, her Mother got remarried, had a baby that's her brother that she calls it. No. No. No. No. Enough.

The second half of The Taking was way better than the first half, it's where the story finally starts to show, and unfortunately the romance. Yeah. I wasn't a fan of that either. It was pretty cringe worthy to be honest. She starts seeing Austin 's (her then boyfriend) brother, Tyler, in a whole new light. Okay, it could be that my brother's name was Tyler, but it's not just that, it's the fact that the last time she saw him he was twelve. Does anybody else find that creepy? She was dating his brother when he was twelve. Yes, he's seventeen now, five years have passed. But the last time she saw him (which, to her wasn't that long ago, like a day or something) he was twelve. That's not romantic.

That's weird.

So, why haven't I rated it lower? Because it kept me reading, I love Kimberly Derting's writing, even if I didn't like the characters. And the plot, you ask? There was little. It's maybe unfair to say, but it's the truth. The Taking actually kind of felt like a long prequel novella until the real story begins, and sometimes that's why I really hate trilogies, the first book always builds up the setting, and while sometimes that is awesome and makes the trilogy better, there's always the unfortunate ones that's worse off for it.

Considering the beginning started off fast, the plot was slow and drawn out and while I did have a lot of issues with The Taking, I'll still read the next.

The Taking, while started off fast paced it slowly dwindled and was drawn out, and while the interesting elements were there, there wasn't enough of it for me. It has it's issues, it's not perfect, but I'll still read the next to make my mind up.

 

 Original Rating: 3.5   New rating: 3/5