Title: The Taking
Author: Kimberly Derting
Series: The Taking #1
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
Release Date: April 29th 2014
Publisher: HarperTeen
Source: eARC received from publisher via 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?


Kimberly Derting has been one of my recent favorite authors when I discovered The Pledge series a few years ago. Since then I have pledged (no pun intended) to read everything she has ever written, and that includes her newest novel, The Taking.

What I think I love the most about Kimberly's writing is that she has a knack for combining contemporary with other genres. And in The Taking she combines a Science Fiction story with the feel of a contemporary YA story. If it weren't for Kyra's strange 5 year disappearance, I would have thought this book was a contemporary. The one thing I will say was that the story ultimately got very Sci-Fi very fast and I would have liked to have been eased into it a little bit more throughout the book. We knew that something happened to Kyra but we didn't know what and even though I knew that this book was about Aliens I just felt like the end was a bit abrupt and shit got crazy really fast!

I loved Kyra as our narrator and as our main character. I thought she was funny and sarcastic, yet she felt real because she dealt with otherworldly situations in a real way. I felt like she was flawed but you wanted to root for her anyway because she was such a likable character and you wanted her to find out exactly what happened to her and what everything was all about.

Secondary characters were very interesting in this book. There was the love interest, Tyler who I really liked because he was so sweet and honestly if he was real I would fall for him too. I will say that the L-word was dropped way too early for me so I would have changed that, but together they were adorable together and I loved reading their story. I really do wish that there was more of Austin (Kyra's ex-boyfriend) and Kyra's ex-best friend because the conflict between the three of them was very intense and I honest think there is more there to explore. I really hope that the relationship between the three of them is explored more in coming books.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this book, I honestly think I will like anything Kimberly writes. I will warn those that hate cliffhanger endings that this one has a big one, and I wasn't happy that I really did not get much closure on certain things, but I will just have to wait for the next book, which I will definitely read!