Taken Review

TITLE Taken (Taken #1)
AUTHOR Erin Bowman
PUBLICATION April 16th 2013 by HarperTeen
READ March 28 to 29, 2013
SOURCE From HarperTeen via Edelweiss for review

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?

After seeing some not so favorable reviews of Taken roll in, I was pretty wary going into the novel. I was told by multiple sources to lower my expectations in hopes that if I did it would seem better. So lower my expectations I did, and it did not work. This novel was full of unrealistic conveniences, a terrible love triangle and a male MC who made me want to pull my hair out. I don’t really have anything positive to say about the novel so we will see how this goes.

I’ll start with Gray. What a terrible person this guy was. He was so impulsive & full of rage and I hated him from chapter one (in which he punches a girl in the face and stomach.) His brother is getting heisted and even at the goodbye ceremony he has all of these jealous thoughts that made me so angry. You are about to lose your brother forever, let your shit go and give him a proper farewell you ass! I can see where his rage was supposed to have come from, he was living in his perfect brother’s shadow his whole life and found out he was lied to by both his brother and his mother but it was much too over the top for me. I also didn’t see much growth in his character, even at the end of the novel he is super jealous and does stupid things to get revenge on people he is supposed to love.

Speaking of love, there is a love triangle here you guys, and it’s a doozy. Here is my favorite quote: “The best I do is nod in and out of consciousness, my arms always hugging Bree, but my eyes always lingering on Emma..” Oh please, first of all this guy was such an ass I can’t fathom why either of these girls wanted him. I guess when there is a shortage of men you will go for anything. Also, I never bought the supposed “love” between Emma and Gray. In the first chapter so much is done to enforce her distaste with his character and the fact that she has always had a thing for his older brother, Blaine. But once Blaine is heisted Emma and Gray immediately get up to all sorts of tomfoolery and are claiming love in a matter of days. I knew that he always had a thing for her, but her mood switch was far too abrupt to be believable.

Speaking of believable (ha notice a trend here? Worst transitions ever, that is the trend.) The conveniences that popped up here and there to advance the plot were just way too perfect. Breaking into a final room and all of a sudden someone pops up that you had no idea existed prior to that scene who is on the right side in the right place at the right time, it was just far too easy. The novel comes with it’s fair share of twists but none of them felt that way because it was so easy to see what was coming a mile away. There is so much of the story that is just way too typical for the genre that it didn’t stand out at all.

This is definitely not a novel that I can recommend. With a flood of dystopians hitting the shelves there has to be something special for one to stand out and this one just doesn’t pack the punch that it needs to. It’s terribly cliche, and is full of dialogue that feels uncomfortable and forced. If I can give you one tip for your Spring reading list it would be to avoid Taken as best as you can.