The Taking by Kimberly Derting

The Taking by Kimberly Derting
Series: The Taking #1
Genre: Science Fiction
Release Date: April 29, 2014
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: Publisher
Add it: Goodreads
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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?

The Taking makes me sad, you guys, and not in a good way. I’m a huge fan of the first three books in Derting’s Body Finder series (not so much the fourth) and I also really enjoyed The Pledge, so I was looking forward to The Taking. I initially thought that it was about fairies but I was so very wrong. I know, I don’t know how I come to these conclusions either.

Anyway, The Taking disappointed me in many ways. Firstly, the bloody romance was appalling. It started off so well, with the main character whose name I can’t remember Kyra returning home to find everything had changed, and mistaking the love interest for her (ex)boyfriend. I was all for it, because I like complicated relationships and this one had the opportunity to really impress me, but it soon turned into insta-love and oh my god, it was terrible.

The other relationships in this book were also poorly developed, and I found myself rolling my eyes at everyone because they were ridiculous. Kyra’s relationship with her mother and new family is cliché, since she is on the outs with all of them and her mother is painted as the bad guy. There is absolutely no resolution or development on that front. Kyra’s father has always been one of her greatest supporters, but when Kyra returns from being Taken their relationship is strained because her dad has turned into a conspiracy theorist. Then there’s the ex-boyfriend, with whom Kyra has one tiny conversation with and suddenly she doesn’t love him any more (after being best friends with him and, later, involved romantically involved with him for years) and the ex-best friend who, again, is given a tiny scene in which nothing really gets said.

Instead of focussing on those already established relationships, Derting decided to focus almost solely on Kyra and Tyler and their new found “love”. They were together romantically for a handful of days before deciding they should get married (not really) and make all the babies (again, not true) and I felt like I was reading Twilight all over again. It should go without saying that family > insta-love, and Derting really disappointed me on that front.

The plot outside of the love story was all right. I was interested in the abduction stuff and the fireflies and the government agency that was after Kyra, but it all felt pretty standard. The mystery surrounding Kyra’s disappearance was interesting, though, especially when I thought it had something to do with fairies. The fairy thing made total sense to me for most of the book, but it turns out I was completely off the mark there. Oops. I blame the front cover.

I don’t recommend The Taking. At all. But I will probably look up to see what happens in the sequel because I am kind of interested in that aspect. I just don’t want to take the time to actually read it. It makes me really sad, because Derting’s early works were excellent, but the newer two books I have read have been very mediocre, and even less than.