Liked the story, but disliked the writing and the main character. ( )

Ho-hum. ( )

Ho-hum. ( )

"Once you've been taken, you usually have twenty-four hours left to live. By my reckoning that meant I had about twelve hours remaining."

An excellent opening which, unfortunately, in retrospect doesn't make much sense. Charity wakes on a stretcher in a van and immediately knows that she has been taken as part of the flourishing kidnapping industry. The problem with the opening sentence is that it is completely undermined by the premise that the kidnapping industry of this imagined near future only works because the victims are returned in 85% of the cases - meaning that most of the taken have far more than twenty-four hours to live. Opening line aside, Bloor effectively reveals what his future society looks like through Charity's memories of the previous few days before her kidnapping which she forces herself to relive in order to keep herself calm. As Charity begins to unravel who has taken her and why she soon comes to understand that this is no ordinary kidnapping. Taken was much more slowly paced than I expected based on the premise, but in some ways the slow reveal of Charity's world works as a metaphor for how junior high school students are often just beginning to wake up and observe the wider world around them. The action does pick up partway through and once things started happening, I didn't want to put it down, but the slow beginning makes this best for readers with patience. ( )

Taken is written by Edward Bloor and this book is about the young Charity Meyers who was taken from her home. Being taken occurs often where she lives because she lives in the rich part of town. She knows that she has to stay calm if she wants to return home after her father pays the ransom, but she realizes that this kidnapping is a normal kidnapping. Everything in this kidnapping is going wrong, and she soon discovers that her kidnapper is her butler who she had trusted. Then finally her family is ready to pay the ransom, and she is forced to watch the drop of the money. This ends up badly because her father’s helicopter crashes, and Charity is in shock. Then a few hours later she is taken to a house and sat down in front of her father, and he tells her that the crash was not real and he actually took her. Then he told her why and that he wanted to start a new life with her. So in the end Charity and her father fled and started a new life.
The book Taken has a very interesting cover. It is a picture of a chess board and it is very dark and creepy with shadows. This cover is appealing to me because it draws you in from the first time you look at it.
I would recommend this book to someone who wants a suspenseful book that has lots of twists and turns, and also to someone who like more of a futuristic type of book. ( )