Book Review: THE TAKEN GIRLS

Title: The Taken Girls

Author: Glenn Cooper

Publisher: Head of Zeus

Pages: 321

My GoodReads Rating: 

One morning, American Dane Jesper Andreason, his Italian wife Elena and their two daughters, Elizabeth and Victoria, disappear from their holiday home, leaving their phones, wallets and everything else behind. Jesper’s father, billionaire Mickey Andreason spares no resource in his search for his family, but is forced to concede failure, when every lead leads to failure.

Four years later, the girls return, without having aged a single day. They say that they were taken by aliens. That’s when Mickey realizes that it is just as a psychic, Celeste Bobier, had predicted four years ago. The church thinks that it might be a miracle. But Marcus is sceptical, even though there are many who think that alien abduction is a very real thing. When a series of murders takes place, the police are even more baffled.

In Part II, we start with Marcus’ story. His wife, Alice, is sick with terminal cancer. He is busy trying to get a Russian spy to defect only to find the spy trying to ‘turn’ him. The case blows up and Marcus leaves the CIA to join Andreason, just as the case of the missing family is blowing up in the media. Pretty soon, Mickey’s entourage grows with Celeste and a UFO investigator joining.

Has the family really been taken by aliens, as Celeste has seen in her visions? Or is there something truly sinister afoot? And what explanation could there be for the girls not having aged a day?

The story is written in the 3^rd person past tense PoV of Elizabeth and Victoria together, Marcus and the antagonist.

 

WHAT I LIKED:

The writing was good, and the author gave us the right amount of backstory on each character to keep us invested. The pace was right; I never got the feeling that I was reading extraneous information on the page. The chapters in which we learn how Marcus loses his wife, Alice, were especially well written.

As a premise, the story might sound like something from the Fantasy genre, but the author holds our interest throughout.

 

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

The story was well told but the ending was rushed. The manner in which the climax was effected left me wanting closure. Given the buildup through the story, I felt that the resolution failed to touch our emotions.

Marcus has his heart in the right place. He’s brave and courageous, but for someone who spent decades working for the CIA, he seemed woefully untrained. Even if he had a desk job, I can’t imagine real CIA people going around identifying themselves as such, that too in a foreign country.

 

WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:

There were three characters whose names started with M, Mickey Andreason, Mitch O’Connor from the American embassy and Marcus Handler, Mickey’s right-hand man. Of course, only 1 was important, but generally speaking, these things should be avoided, particularly when both are in the same scene together.

There was a character named Gunar, who was meant to be menacing but his actions didn’t quite project the level of menace the narration led us to expect.

The story is set is Italy and Spain, but the governments of the two countries are strangely uninvolved with the story. The girls are not interviewed, neither by the US Federal authorities nor by their Italian counterparts. Does the grandfather’s money hold foreign governments in thrall too?

 

ALL SAID AND DONE: An interesting premise, but the vigour of the plot tapers out towards the end.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)