The Taking (The Taking #1) by Kimberly Derting

The Taking (The Taking #1)

by Kimberly Derting

368 pages

Publisher: Harper Teen

Release Date: April 29th, 2014

Rate: Loved it

Synopsis:

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?

"It was like looking at a constellation.

A radiant, sparkling, living constellation."

Kimberly Derting's stories are simply amazing and with this new book she did it again. She rocked my world and blowed my mind. 

This is something entirely different from the stories that I'm used to read written by Kimberly. This time, Ms. Derting creates a sixteen year old girl named Kyra Agnew that has what you could call a perfect life, with some problems from time to time, but a dreamed one. She has a handsome and nice boyfriend, she's the star of her team, a family that loves her and a bright future ahead. But in a moment everything's taken from her. And it all started with a white, bright light.

After that argument with her father about Austin, her boyfriend, and where to go to college, she wakes up behind a dumpster not remembering how she got there. What blew my mind and Kyra's mind was that five years have passed and she's the same sixteen year old girl, but everything moved one: her family, her friends, her boyfriend, her little brother's boyfriend and life itself. Her mother has a new family, her father has some crazy theories about what happened to her, her boyfriend is no longer her boyfriend and he's almost finishing college, her best friend has what was supposed to be her life and she has this weird attraction for Austin's little brother, Tyler, who's seventeen now and sexy as hell, that with time it grows stronger and stronger. 

Kimberly Derting has the ability of not only creating amazing stories, but making the reader be part of the story, like he or she's the main character. I was definitely inside Kyra's head, suffering the changes of there "new" life and the consequences of it. It was pretty heart-breaking and you cannot help it, but put yourself in Kyra's situation and imagine what it would be like to be Kyra. Ms. Derting combined both, past and future, really good. It was like the timeline never stopped and you feel the confusion that the main character's feeling when she discovers that nothing is like it used to be and that the boy hugging her is not her boyfriend, but his "little" brother. 

I honestly couldn't stop reading. Why did it happened to her? Why not her father, too? What's wrong with her? And, what's going yo happen to her?

Like I said before, it was heart-breaking reading Kyra's point of view, trying to figure out who she fits in a life that is not longer her life 'cause everyone, except her father, fought she was dead. 

Her mother is skeptical about her father's theory and a little bit harsh with the whole disappearance topic. On the other side, Kyra's father is complete sweet and what a father should always be. He represented all the craziness about losing a kid and thinking that aliens took his daughter. But between mother and father is a very clear and wrenching difference: one tried to move on and the other tried to still find Kyra after all those years.

The "old" Austin is what you could call a jerk, but you also have to put in his situation. He thought, like Kyra's mom, that she was dead, so, eventually, he moved on. Despite this rational behavior, what he did wrong was how he handled his visit to Kyra. And, on the other side, we have sexy, sweet and adorable Tyler. He's a sexy nerd, who like books and leaves pretty amazing and unbelievable gifts every morning to Kyra. How can you not fall for a guy like this? He's definitely in my Fictional Boy List. And how he handles all the situation of "I-am-still-sixteen" throughout the whole story is pretty amazing and that makes him have a bonus for perfect fictional boy.

"I don't have time to argue," I shot back. "But you can't go with me. Stay here and tell them this was all some sort of mix-up. That you didn't know anything about me and what I am." I dropped the curtain, ignoring the dust that puffed up when I did.

Tyler grabbed my arm and forced me to face him. "Kyra, stop being so stubborn." When I opened my mouth to argue, he cut me off. "No. I mean it. You're being stupid again, and this time not the good kind. You're out of your mind if you think I'm not going with you."

Back to the plot, it all starts with Kyra's story, her life before the taking and after. There's a culminating point the story where everything gets out of control and the main characters find themselves running for their lives. It's the best part of the book and where the whole action happens and what science fiction and X files fans would definitely love. 

Before reading the book I didn't understand the cover, but now I do, Book Addicts, and it's pretty amazing what the artist did. I am just saying: fireflies.

The ending broke my heart and made me cry. It was kind of torture and at the same time I had to congratulate the author, because it wouldn't be the same without that heartfelt scene. It is what I like to call a wrenching, unexpected and emotional ending that leaves the reader with the need of more. And I definitely want more!

After enjoying so much this new work of Kimberly, I am an unofficial fan of The Taking series and cannot wait to read what happened with the characters. I couldn't expect less of this wonderful writer and Ms. Derting wrote, once more, an unforgettable alienated story that would captivate you from the first page until the end.

That's why I am giving five gorjuss dolls to this book and highly recommending it to you all, Book Addicts, because I am sure you are going to love it.

Lily Collins as Kyra

Brenton Thwaites as Tyler

Indiana Evans as Cat

Matt Lanter as Austin

What do you think, Book Addicts?

Kimberly is the author of the BODY FINDER series (HarperCollins), THE PLEDGE trilogy (Simon & Schuster), and THE TAKING trilogy (coming Summer 2014 from HarperTeen). She lives in the Pacific Northwest, the ideal place to write anything dark or creepy...a gloomy day can set the perfect mood. She lives with her husband and their three beautiful (and often mouthy) children who provide an endless source of inspiration.