ARC Review: Taken by Erin Bowman

Release Date: April 16th, 2013
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: HarperTeen

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?

Taken was one of my most-awaited novels this year. I had it in my mind ever since I heard the summary and maybe, that's the reason that it didn't quite meet my expectations. Furthermore I'm not that used to male narrators but with time I even started to like reading from the boy's point of view.
Although it wasn't what I was expecting, Taken still was a great read.

The plot goes pretty much as expected. Gray's brother is expected to be heisted within the next 24 hours and that's what happens. From this moment on, I could almost always foresay what it was going to happen. And that was the thing that bothered me so much in this novel. And also I really disliked the love triangle and that's not usually a problem for me. Gray started to get closer to a new girl while Emma was in trouble and that was what upset me somehow. But while these things could have been better, Bowman does bring a lot of action to the novel and the story itself is actually really interesting and original.

I had a hate/love relationship to each character. All characters have nice and bad characteristics. And yes, I know this is usually a good thing, but it was too much sometimes and they just started to get on my nerves. Gray was sometimes too grumpy and Emma too weird. By far my favorite character was Bree, even though she acted a bit too manly sometimes, she was an interesting character. And I would have liked to get to know more about Blaine (Gray's brother), since he almost didn't appear in this novel.

Taken is a novel that I certainly expected more of, but I'm still happy that I got to read it and review it. The plot was captivating yet I felt that the whole thing was backwards. The beginning was the best part of the novel while towards the ending, the pace slowed down. Mostly I like books that end with a bang, and that was not the case. I'm still going to read the next one, though. I would recommend reading Taken, maybe you will have another opinion about it!

Thanks to HarperTeen and Edelweiss for providing me with a copy for review!