Monday, May 19, 2014

The Taking by Kimberly Derting (The Taking book 1)

"What if the life you are living is not your own?"


"A flash of white light ... and then ... nothing."

After a fight with her father over her future, Kyra makes him stop the car by the side of the road so that she can get out. She will call her boyfriend Austin to come and pick her up. Kyra runs and falls on the asphalt. Picking herself up, she brushes the dirt and gravel from her clothes. Suddenly, all she can see is a blinding, white light. She hears her father screaming. Kyra feels dizzy and weightless, then, nothing.

Kyra wakes up with her head pounding, the feel of asphalt at her back and the smell of gasoline in the air. Realizing that something is hitting her in the head, she opens her eyes to blinding daylight. She sees a little boy and finds herself at the Gas 'N' Sip. Not knowing how she got there, Kyra sees that she spent the night behind a dumpster. She decides to call Austin because he and her parents are probably freaking out over her disappearance. She is shocked to see that her cell phone says “No Service.”

She begins to walk the short distance to her house and has a strange since of déjà vu. Her house looks the same but also different. The door is locked and the key is gone from over the doorway. She knocks on the door and a small boy peeks out of the window. Kyra is confused since she is an only child and her parents dote on her. Finally, an unfamiliar man opens the door and she is even more confused. The furnishings are different and the man offers to call for help. Confused, she looks across the street to Austin's house and notices his mother' car s in the driveway. She crosses the street and knocks on the back door. Austin answers and Kyra falls into his arms. Relieved, she hears Mrs. Wahl ask Tyler who is there. She pulls back to speak to her when Mrs. Wahl drops her coffee mug. Austin tells his mother that Kyra is there but Kyra notices that something is off about Austin’s voice. She looks at the arms around her waist; they aren't tan like they should be since Austin had just completed his lifeguard certification for the summer. She looks up at Austin's face and he has to catch her for a second time. Kyra isn't in the arms of her seventeen year old boyfriend Austin’s. She is in the arms of his younger brother, Tyler, who yesterday was twelve. Now, Tyler looks seventeen.

Kyra wakes up in Austin's bed. The general decor hadn't changed but things don't seem lived in. Mrs. Wahl tries her best to explain that five years have passed since Kyra went missing. Looking at Tyler, Kyra seems to believe her but when she looks at herself, she is confused. Kyra is still dressed in her softball uniform from the championship game, ribbons still woven in her hair from last night. She even still has the bruise on her leg from the previous night when she wrestled her best friend Cat for the remote. Mrs. Wahl tells her that her mother is on the way and hopefully she can explain things better. Kyra is watching out the front window when Tyler comes up behind her. He comments that things must be weird for her. Kyra sees her mother is driving a different car. She has the door open before her mother can knock and is in her arms. Her mother makes her promises and she asks where her father is. Before her mother can answer, the man who answered the door at her house comes up to them, with the toddler boy following along behind. Her mother endearingly calls the man "Grant.' He apologizes to her mother that he didn't recognize Kyra from the pictures. The little boy climbs into her mother's arms and says "Mommy!" Kyra immediately knows that her parents have continued on with their lives, separately, while she was supposedly missing. Her mother tells her that she didn't want her to find out this way. Kyra asks for her father. Her mother lets her know that he is on his way. Kyra goes back inside the Wahl's house, leaving her mother and new family outside.

Kyra goes back to Austin's bedroom and Tyler follows. She asks him if there is anything else she needs to know. He teases her and she wonders why she mistook him for his brother at first. She asks Tyler if she can call Austin. Tyler sits down beside her on the bed and he tells her that there is no need. His mother has already called him but she had to leave a message. She asks him how long her parents have been divorced. Tyler isn't sure but her father moved out a year after she disappeared. The police looked into the case, to no avail. Rumors started circulating that her father had something to do with her disappearance. Kyra is adamant that her father had nothing to do with it. His father, a policeman, believed that her father was innocent. Tyler asks; What did happen? Where has she been for the past five years? Kyra has no answers.

Kyra soon realizes that life has gone on without her. She is now a legal adult even though she looks the same as she did five years earlier. Her parents divorced over her father's theories over her disappearance. Her mother has started a new life and family while her father has a drinking problem and believes Kyra’s disappearance is because of alien abduction. Austin has moved on with his life, with her best friend, Cat. Tyler, who had a crush on Kyra when he was younger, is the one person who she can count on.

What really happened the night Kyra disappeared? Where was she for the past five years? Why is she unable to remember? How come she hasn't aged? What happens when Kyra begins to lean on Tyler more and sparks begin to fly? Will she ever find out what really happened? Was Kyra abducted by aliens?

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