Staff Pick - Taken by Erin Bowman

Enjoy post-apocalyptic? How about a little sci-fi? Enjoy YA fiction? Want a quick read, but something to leave you thinking at the end? Well, I have the book for you!

Erin Bowman’s Taken (M) tells the story of a colony of people, living within the confines of ‘the wall’ in a place called Claysoot. Generations of people have lived as Gray and his brother Blaine have; all the boys in Claysoot are ‘heisted’ at the age of eighteen. That is just a way it always was. Those that try a climb the wall, are found charred and dead.

A secret letter from his dead mother raised so many questions with Gray, especially now he is the only boy not to have been heisted at age eighteen simply because he was hidden for a full year, and played off as a new baby and not part of a twin the year before!

Gray sets out to find answers beyond the wall, with the help of a friend, Emma, and the questions just build and build.

Bowman’s use of foreshadow and cliffhangers keep the reader in the middle of this man made world! What will happen to Gray and Emma? What will become of Claysoot and the other colonies? Will they ever get back over the wall before Frank, leader of Taem, and the Order catches up? You will just have to read it to find out!



Read-a-likes:

I Am Number Four (M)
by Pittacus Lore

Hunger Games (M)
by Suzanne Collins