The Taking by Kimberly Derting

by:  Kimberly Derting
published by:  HarperTeen
publish date:  April 29, 2014

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. 

I got this book not expecting a whole lot.  I'm not a big fan of sci-fi, but I didn't know anything about this book.  I thought perhaps instead of aliens that maybe there would be some other answer for Kyra's disappearance.  This, however, is the first book in a YA series so the question wasn't really, for sure, answered.

I did, however, like this book.  I liked Kyra.  I really liked that she was a softball player.  All three of my girls play softball and it's a sport that is rarely written about in YA.  I thought it was a really believable story about someone that has been gone for 5 years trying to adjust to living in her new reality.  Although, I thought there might be more police involvement.  Her mom's rather standoffish behavior was a little odd too, but I guess she had moved on and made a new family.

So I'd recommend this book for the YA readers, with the caution that it's the start of a series.  You're going to finish this book with questions.  I never like that.  It looks like the next book The Replaced (April 28, 2015) has come out though, so maybe it answers some of them.