Review: The Taking by Kimberly Derting

Title: The Taking (The Taking #1)
Author: Kimberly Derting
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release date: April 29th 2014
Source: Edelweiss
Format: eARC

Rating: 4/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

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?

The Taking has a great start that immediately hooked me, because it has mystery mixed with science fiction.

This book is about Kyra a sixteen year old, that after having a fight with her father, decides to get off the car and when she made ​​a run is illuminated by a powerful light and loses consciousness then wakes up behind a dumpster in a gas station near her home. And when she returns home realizes that everything has changed and she has been missing for five years, of which she remembers nothing.

So from there Kyra must adjust to her new life, decide what she will do with it and deal with her father who seems to have lost his mind, because he says that her disappearance is because she was abducted by beings from another planet. In addition to all that she must come to terms that Austin (the love of her life) move on and now she feels attracted towards Austin´s younger brother, Tyler.

I loved the idea of ​​the story and the story seemed very original and interesting (although it reminds me a little bit of a movie), I liked the whole mystery behind Kyra´s disappearance and how little by little she begins to discover what happened to her. There are some very interesting and unexpected twists in the story.

What I didn´t like or I didn´t believe was the romance between Kyra and Tyler, because while Tyler had been 5 years without seeing her, he saw his brother get on with life, so on and Tyler liked Kyra since he was 12 years old, but for her it 's only been a few days since she was in love with Austin, the boy that has been her boyfriend for years and his best friend, so that makes the romance between Tyler and Kyra very insta-love. Although I must say that Tyler is so cute, likable, very persistent and determined to win her love.

The Taking is fast-paced, full of mystery and had me guessing all the time about what had happened to Kyra?, why it happened to her?, why she looks exactly the same as five years ago?, why are people who seem to be following her?. Overall it´s a good first book in a trilogy and it left me with a lot of questions, it has a cliffhanger ending and I can´t wait to read the next book.