The Things They’ve Taken by Katie McElhenney

The Things They’ve Taken by Katie McElhenney

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

All Lo Campbell has ever wanted was to just be a normal teenager instead of being dragged from one place to another with her mother all her life. But Lo and her mother are not normal in the fact that they can see what others can’t from the supernatural world.

One night Lo finds herself in a living nightmare when her mother is taken by a demon so now Lo will do anything to find her mother and bring her back. Starting off on a journey by visiting another demon Lo seeks answers into what happens and finds herself teamed up with a tracker in the quest to find her mother.

The Things They’ve Taken was a rather fast paced young adult fantasy dealing with demons and all kinds of other creatures. While I enjoyed the pace of this one, the interesting characters, situations and not having the romance thrust into full gear right away I did find a few other flaws in my opinion bringing my rating down to 3.5 stars.

First, I was expecting the story to start off with a mother and daughter living in a normal type world but it jumped right into Lo needing to find her mother with very little world building to introduce the story. Also, while I did enjoy the adventure that Lo tackles in order to find her mother and the different characters brought in the story seemed to have a rather abrupt ending making this feel more like the beginning of a book. As much as I tried to turn the pages the book was over leaving me with questions and no word of a sequel which was disappointing.

Overall, 3.5 stars, even with the flaws I still enjoyed the fast pace of the story that was there and would continue reading about these characters if the story is continued.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.