The Taking: review

The Taking by Kimberly Derting
My rating: 2.5 stars
Released April 29, 2014
Summary: 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?
My thoughts:

Rant warning. It's not bad things, I just have some things to say that probably aren't very constructive.

Hm, this is a trilogy, not a duo? Could have been a standalone, had potential.

While I liked The Taking all right, I didn't like it as much as The Pledge trilogy. But ALIENS. Seriously that just bumps up the points a lot, because there aren't an overwhelming amount of ya books on that subject right now. Abductions are awesome.

I had a hard time getting to like Kyra, our main character. It took quite a long while, especially since she keeps saying things like "grown ups" and not ironically, like I do. All the sudden 16 sounds so freaking young to me. And the boy-next-door (who is actually across the street) is of the wise old age of 17, which is how old my younger brother is, which totally creeped me out. So, personally, I think I've about had it with young adult, but for people who don't mind reading about gushy feelings with some aliens on the side, I'm sure you'll love it. And I eventually did feel sorry for Kyra, because I thought, if I was gone for five years and came back but it was only yesterday to me, yeah, it would totally suck. BUT I would understand that everybody moved on. I mean, I wouldn't want my family to be miserable forever. She's just kinda whiny about it. And she doesn't swear enough. You can tell she wants to though. But that might be too grown-up for her.

Mostly, the story focused on the mushy things too much, she could  have made this real hard core, but nope, mushy. I suppose that sums up what that last huge paragraph said.

It is a fast read; everything happens very precisely on time, (Kyra has an obsession of looking at the clock a lot) and I think the book spans six days. Which GUYS IT'S NOT ENOUGH TIME TO FALL IN LOVE sorry. That bothered me. There was a good amount of suspense, but the mushy part overwhelmed it juuust over the border for my tastes.

If you a fan of Kimberly Derting, you will like it. If you like fireflies, or corrupt government agencies with off the grid work, then you will like it. If you like alien abductions and mysterious circumstances, you'll like it. If you need a cliffhanger, this one has it.