The Taking by Kimberly Derting

The Taking by Kimberly Derting 

Publisher: Harper Teen      

Publication date: April 29th 2014
My rating: 3.5 stars

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?

After a softball match Kyra starts fighting with her father and sees a strange light. She wakes up behind a dumpster with no recollection of how she ended up there. When she goes home she finds her mother has a new husband and a son while her father's become a conspiracy theory pro who's living in a trailer. Her boyfriend has moved on and is dating her best friend and the only person she can rely on is her ex boyfriend's little brother, Tyler who's now older than her. You see, Kyra's been gone for 5 years. 

I'm really conflicted about this book. On one hand I did like the first half of the book which focuses on Kyra and Tyler. Tyler was so cute, sweet and thoughtful. I was gushing whenever he was around. If there's a reason someone should read this book, it would be Tyler. He's had a crush on Kyra since he was a little kid but she didn't notice him because she was dating his brother. Kyra was nice enough even though nothing stood out about her character. She's one of those forgettable main characters. 

Like I mentioned this before. The first part of the book was all about Kyra and Tyler while the second half focused on solving the mystery or should I say running around without knowing what they're going to do next. I wish the characters wanted to ind out what happened before, in the first half of the book. This way the book was split in half, like The Taking was actually two different versions of the same book.  As if the author wanted to focus more on the romance but then, halfway, she changed her mind. Sadly, I didn't find the science fiction part as compelling as the romance. One last thing, romance in the second part of the book was too cheesy. It was one of those 'oh, how I love you. I would gladly give up my life for you' type of romances.  I hope the author fixes this in the sequel because I plan to read the whole trilogy.