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 is basically about a girl called Kyra who has been abducted by aliens for five years and then released with no memory of what's happened. The weirder thing is, she starts to discover that she has superpowers that she wouldn't dream of as well as hidden danger. Finding out what's happened to her is not her only problem. People are after her, and they'll stop at nothing to get their hands on her.
Alien abduction. An age-old story. There are countless reports about people claiming they've been abducted by aliens of all kinds, whether they're little green men or whatever they hell they are. There are something common about some of the stories. No memory of what happened during their "abduction", flashes of white lights, being partially or completely different in more ways than one after their "abduction", etc. I like the fact that this book is based on these seemingly ridiculous (yet some of them might just be true) stories. It's pretty cool and thrilling.
After note: But there's one thing I don't understand about alien abduction. Be reminded that that has nothing to do with Kimberly Derting's writing skills. I've been asking the same question for a long time now. What the hell is the point of these aliens abducting humans? There are so many cases about those "previously abducted" humans being perfectly fine and no weird abilities are shown. If they're trying to take out the human race (that's my theory, otherwise why would they waste their time on us?), congratulations aliens, you fail gloriously.
Kyra is your typical girl. A girl whom you might know in high school. There's actually nothing exceptionally remarkable about Kyra, other than her newfound superpowers and her eagerness to save the ones she loves and find out the truth. But for some reason that girl brings some sort of comfort for me. She can be easily related. And I guess that's what many teens want -- they want to think that there's someone out there who are like us (of course we don't normally have superpowers, but that's besides the point). And then there's Tyler. It's official. I love that guy. Again there's nothing exceptionally remarkable about Tyler. But he's one big sweetheart. And he will protect Kyra at all cost and stay with her no matter what, even when being near her is putting himself in grave danger. He's the kind of boyfriend that your parents will totally approve (that is, if they don't get wary about his charming looks and dimples before they have a chance to really know him).
My favorite part? Besides various Kyra/Tyler scenes? I'd go for the ending. Ahh, the cliffhanger ending! You can't seriously end it like that! It's just completely acceptable! Okay it's actually perfectly acceptable. In fact if you ask my logical side, I'd say it's a pretty awesome ending for The Taking. But I just can't imagine waiting the next book for a year... no, more than a year. Because the next book will probably be released in April, 2015. The waiting! It's excruciating!
The Taking is a really nice book and I think everyone should give it a chance. Though I have some little problems with the concept of alien abduction, it's nothing major and the rest of the story is pretty good.
Rating: 8/10
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