Week Nine Book Eleven--Taken

This week I read Taken by Edward Bloor. A fairly quick read with a VERY interesting concept. It is year 2035, and a new business is booming in America--kidnapping. People have started kidnapping teens, demanding ransoms, and therefore making money. So rich families are now living in VERY high-security neighborhoods with trained butlers and maids, tracking devices, the works.

Charity, a young rich teen living with her father and sometimes her fame-crazed ex-stepmother, has just been kidnapped. So she starts doing the things that she has been trained to do. But those things don't work and time is running out, so she needs a major back-up plan to get her out of this dangerous situation.

I've read one of Bloor's other novels, Tangerine, and I definitely think that he writes some interesting characters. Not always believable, but novertheless interesting. With this book, however, I just didn't find that I could relate to them. I wasn't necessarily cheering for Charity but I think I was supposed to...and her parents? Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous, even for a book with some science fiction twists. I was not sympathetic with Charity's father (throughout the WHOLE book) and her ex-stepmother was repulsive. Let's just say I won't be decorating the library with any Edwardian Christmas decor in the near future...

But it was a pretty good mystery with some surprises along the way. Let's just say that people aren't always who they appear to be...and the people you think are good/bad may actually be the opposite. An interesting read but definitely not a re-read.