Hello, Book Nerds! Welcome back to Reading Has Ruined My Life or welcome if you are new. As always, my name is Hannah and I am your captain on this journey into my bookcases.
Happy New Year! Happy 5th birthday to Reading Has Ruined My Life! It’s been five years of book reviews, insanity, versus matches, nonsensical listicles, and the trials and tribulations of falling in love with a new book each and every week. Thank you, dear reader, for joining me even if it was only for one post. Here’s to five more years!
As for what I’m reviewing today, I have a very special post for you. Today’s review is brought to you by Roundfire Books and Collective Ink; they aren’t paying me for my review, they just sent me the book for free. Thank you very much for reaching out and offering me this book. It means a lot when someone out there wants to send me books. Thank you!
And what book am I reviewing today? Please give a warm welcome to The Taking by Dona Masi. The Taking releases in the US today, January 1, 2025.
So let’s crack in. As always, a spoiler alert is in order. If you’ve read any other review on this site then you know I love to spoil the entirety of the books I read. This is your one and only warning. I also have a quick content and trigger warning. The Taking deals with alien abduction and involves clinical scenes of aliens testing on humans, and one of these scenes focuses on a little girl. It just made me very uncomfortable so I figured I’d include a content warning for it. There is also discussion of suicide as one of the supporting characters ends his own life. With that, let’s get to the synopsis.
Since birth, Vera has been visited by aliens. These haven’t been the friendliest visits as she has been taken to their ship and had experiments and tests performed on her. This goes on for the entirety of her life. And it’s something her father is familiar with, even if he doesn’t admit it for many, many years. You see, Vera’s mother Suzy “left” when Vera was two-years-old, but did she really leave her family of her own volition? Or was it aliens? Yeah, it was most likely aliens.
But this isn’t Suzy’s story, this is Vera’s and she’s being abducted by aliens. And that’s all that happens for the whole story. Sometimes Vera remembers what has occurred, other times she doesn’t. Sometimes her father remembers weird things seemingly happening to his daughter. But mostly The Taking is about Vera growing into teen and living her life with all the messy, petty drama that comes with being a teenager on top of being an alien test subject.
One question remains though: will anyone ever believe her should she reveal she’s been abducted by aliens? Perhaps some, like her best friends, will. The general public on the other hand, probably not so much. With such an outlandish tale, Vera can, and would, be easily branded as crazy.
There’s not much going on in The Taking. Honestly, I didn’t care for it. The story is nothing more than pointless conversations strung together with scenes of nothingness. The Taking is a book I had a hard time writing a synopsis for because there’s really no plot. Everything is so disjointed. The dialogue is clunky at best, there are long, drawn out paragraphs with no purpose, and too much telling with no showing. This book is a big no from me.
I feel like I can stop this review right here. The Taking is bad, it’s just plain bad. It’s poorly written and was a chore to get through. It took far too long for me to read. I flat out do not recommend this read. If you want more reasons as to why I did not care for this book, then here they are.
Firstly, Vera wasn’t a great main character. She has no growth as a character, and yes, she is a teenager so I don’t expect her to have made all the smart decisions or been fully mature by the end, but she gave nothing. Never once did she try to find out why she’s being abducted or attempt to stop the aliens. She just silently gave up and resigned herself to a life of alien abductions. There’s no fight in her. It’s unfathomable to me that a person in her situation wouldn’t fight at all.
Then there’s Gwen and John. John is Vera’s father and Gwen is the mother of Vera’s best friend. They for many, many years had a Will-They-Won’t-They style relationship. Guess what? This relationship isn’t all that great either. Truthfully they seem to get together because their daughters think they would make a cute couple. That’s it. That’s why this meaningless relationship begins. The author continuously tells readers Gwen and John are attracted to one another, but you could have fooled me as these two have no chemistry and every interaction they have seems to be an argument. Gwen and John are shells of characters and are thrust together for no reason other than extra word count.
Also, for those of you out there who were looking for a science fiction read, I’m sorry to report that you won’t find much science in this one. The only reason The Taking is classed as science fiction is because there are aliens. Don’t expect to read about any interesting, futuristic technology or alien worlds, this book doesn’t have them. It just happens to have aliens.
I’m not really a fan of the science fiction genre. I have nothing against it, in fact I grew up watching Star Trek reruns with my dad and enjoyed that time immensely. Jurassic Park is my favorite film franchise; I just don’t tend to read science fiction. My wheelhouse is horror and thrillers. Give me some good Gothic lit and I’ll be the happiest girl in the world. The Taking is such a poor book that I don’t intend to read many more science fiction books in the near future; that’s how much I disliked this read. Which is a shame because I know the genre can be great. I know there are fantastic science fiction reads out there, The Taking is just so bad it left a sour taste in my mouth.
Oh, one last thing before I go. There is a dog in this book. He's a ten-out-of-ten good boy and survives. No harm befalls the dog! If you are here to find out if the dog lives, please release the breath you are holding because he is indeed fine. The Taking gets a single point in its favor.
With that, I shall bid you all adieu. Thank you once again to Roundfire Books and Collective Ink for sending me a copy of today’s book. It does mean a lot to me that someone out there wants to send me books. Thank you again!
As for you, dear reader, thank you for joining me today and thank you if you have joined me at any point during the last five years. It has been quite the ride full of many wild posts, listicles, book recs, and reviews out the wazoo. Thank you, thank you! I will see you all again next week with another great post. But if you can’t wait a full week then you can always check out my podcast Nothing to See Hear. It stars me and two of my dearest friends as we talk weirdos of history, spooky stuff, Disney, Scooby-Doo, and anything else you can think of; there is bound to be something that strikes your fancy.
Until next time, stay safe, wash your hands, and read some good books for me.
