The Taking by Kimberly Derting

The Taking:
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 by Kimberly Derting is the first of a brand new Sci-Fi series, and it began filled with thrills, secrets and romance. The premise of this book was intense and intriguing, and Kimberly’s writing was spot on. I haven’t read any of her work since the Body Finder series, but I must quickly amend that. This book starts off with a HUGE mystery and I was completely glued to the pages as I followed the story. There was also plenty of action to keep me entertained, and although the romance was a little (ok A LOT) fast: most notably the fact that it’s as if ONE day has passed for Kyra and she finds herself undeniably attracted to the supposed “love of her life’s” kid brother. Although I did enjoy the charming if sometimes corny gestures Tyler made in order to capture Kyra’s heart. I even appreciated the “villain” of the story, a government agent with a very Mulder-esque vibe (X-Files guys…sheesh! Does no one remember the awesomeness that was Mulder and Scully???). But is he truly the villain? Or is it something more sinister? The Taking ends on a rather massive cliffhanger, with Tyler’s life in the balance, and Kyra and others like her on the run from the government.