Release Date: April 16th, 2013
Genre: Romance, Dystopia
Publisher: HarperTeen
Pages: 360
Rating:
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Summary:

There are no men in Claysoot. There are boys—but every one of them vanishes at midnight on his eighteenth birthday. The ground shakes, the wind howls, a blinding light descends…and he’s gone.

They call it the Heist.

Gray Weathersby’s eighteenth birthday is mere months away, and he’s prepared to meet his fate–until he finds a strange note from his mother and starts to question everything he’s been raised to accept: the Council leaders and their obvious secrets. The Heist itself. And what lies beyond the Wall that surrounds Claysoot–a structure that no one can cross and survive.

Climbing the Wall is suicide, but what comes after the Heist could be worse. Should he sit back and wait to be taken–or risk everything on the hope of the other side?

Review: (Keep in mind that I read this in one day, and almost EVERY book I read in one day I say "goes too fast" but I think this one really did regardless of how fast I read it)

This book started off great! It started really interesting because it posed lots of questions that none of the characters considered "questions." Why is there a wall around our village that we can't cross? Why do 18-year-old boys disappear? The characters ask these questions, then shrug and move on.

What I initially loved about this story was that it actually GAVE US ANSWERS! I get so tired of books that string you a long with question after question and just expect you to keep reading even though you're NEVER given ANY answers! Not with TAKEN. Not long after questions were asked, they were answered. And then more questions were asked an answered. And then... we started getting answers to questions we hadn't asked... And by the end I found myself wishing that the author had held SOMETHING back. Because now that I've finished it, all my questions have been answered, and the only thing that might motivate me to read the second book is the love triangle.

But here's the thing about the love triangle. It's an interesting one (since it's two girls and one boy), but I never really connected with either of the girls. Perhaps it's because I read the book too fast, or perhaps it's because the book was full of "one week later"s and "two months later"s. I'm not a huge fan of books that skip so far forward in time. I want to SEE what happens there! Put your big breaks in between books!

But even though I've listed what I think are the books 2 faults (answers too many questions and goes too fast), it has many more virtues. I love the story, I love the setting, I love the premise, I love the main character (Bowman does a GREAT job writing from a male perspective [said a female]). And I certainly will read the second book. But am I dying to get my hands on it? No. The ending to this one left me perfectly content. Hopefully that doesn't mean that it also made this book perfectly forgettable.

EDIT: I initially wrote this review on April 24th. About a week ago I was trying to decide what to read and I saw this on my shelf and thought "Oh yeah! I really want to read Taken! Why haven't I read that yet?" I even picked it up and put it in my purse before I realized "Wait... I have read that." So, forgettable? Apparently.

Other Reviews:

• Xpresso Reads (Loved it!)
• Speculating on SpecFic (It was okay)
• A Girl, a Boy and a Blog (REALLY Didn't Like It)

*I am an amazon affiliate. If you purchase this book using my link, I will get a tiny fraction of the purchase, which goes toward contests.