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Reviewed by:
  • The Taking by Kimberly Derting
  • Kate Quealy-Gainer
Derting, Kimberly. The Taking. HarperTeen/HarperCollins, 2014. [368p]. Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-229360-2 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-229362-6 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys M Gr. 7-10.

A fight with her father leads sixteen-year-old Kyra to get out of the car and walk home along a deserted rural road in her small Washington town. A flash of light and one serious headache later, Kyra wakes up behind a local gas station—and discovers that five years have passed. Her parents are now divorced and her mother has another kid, her boyfriend is in college and dating Kyra’s best friend, and her dad is now a conspiracy theorist dedicated to finding the source of the light that he believes was responsible for Kyra’s five-year absence. Tyler, the formerly annoying but now totally hot younger brother of her boyfriend, is the only one that treats Kyra with any sense of normalcy, but when agents from the National Security Agency show up asking questions about Kyra’s new freakish abilities to see in the dark and heal herself instantaneously, Kyra’s pretty sure any hope of a normal life is out the window. Despite the appeal of the Rip Van Winkle–like premise, the book gets off to an agonizingly slow start, one that underscores both Kyra’s penchant for navel-gazing whininess and the illogicality behind several of the character’s actions: [End Page 510] neither of Kyra’s parents, for example, seems concerned with figuring out where she has been for five years. The pace picks up when the NSA men in black show up and the mystery behind Kyra’s abilities deepens, but the slog to an ending that only promises another installment makes this ultimately unsatisfying to readers who would be better served by Castellucci’s First Day on Earth (BCCB 11/11).

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