Taken Away (Brothers #1)

Book Review
Title: Taken Away
Author: Cyn Bermudez
Genre: Middle Grade/Family
Rating: *****
Review: So all I can gather from the synopsis is that this novel is about Victor, Isaac, Vanessa, and Sara who have been taken away from their mother. They've been forced to leave behind their home, school, friends, and worst of all, each other. Vanessa and Sara have been placed in the same foster home, but Victor and Isaac have been separated from their younger siblings and each other. However, I had some doubts as the hardcover of this book is only 88 pages long.
So, this story is told entirely through emails between the siblings and how they are adjusting to their new lives apart. We know their mother was arrested and put in jail, but we don’t know why exactly. Isaac is the softer of the two brothers, but Victor keeps him in check especially on the subject of foster parents or foster keepers as Victor calls them.
We see the boys have gone to two different homes, Isaac is with a nice couple who try to treat him like a son, but he refuses to get close to them thinking it will make him forget his own family despite them telling him otherwise. He also struggles to make friends since many know about his mother and they often make fun of him causing him to get into fights. We learn that after their dad died, they struggled for money, so their mother stole money and expensive items from the homes she was cleaning and got caught.
Victor, on the other hand, lives with an elderly woman who treats her foster kids like paychecks and the second Victor gets into trouble she gets him moved. Both brothers are called into a meeting although separately and they miss the chance to see each other although Isaac’s foster parents are open to a visit, Victor gets moved to a new home where the couple now has 6 foster children, but they seem a lot nicer than his previous caretaker.
Overall, I really loved the relationship between the brothers and the journey they take. I would have like to have heard from the two sisters as well and I can’t wait to read the next book in order to see whether the brothers actually get to meet each other again.

Note: I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

From what I’ve read about the Brothers series these books are intended for struggling middle grade readers that may be dealing with some tougher topics in their own lives including bullying, the foster system, poverty, and incarceration or death of a parent, These are very important topics to be addressed for the middle grade audience, especially as a mirror for readers to see themselves reflected in the books they’re reading. That being said I feel that this book lacked an overall believability and depth in both story and character development.

I liked that in our technology driven world the brothers are communicating through emails, but they just give very brief, superficial snippets into what’s happening in their lives after they’ve been separated from each other as well as their younger sisters. It’s very hard to get involved and feel connected with the story or the brothers in with just short emails.

I also think that if the reader could see the pictures that Isaac and Victor are sending each other or look at the websites the links refer to, rather than just getting a brief reaction from the recipient (I don’t know if this is just missing in the ARC, but it would be a great addition to the story) that they would feel more connected to the boys and their story.

I genuinely feel very torn about <i>Taken Away</i> by Cyn Bermudez. I think this comes down to two things. The book was very short and it was written in e-mail/letter format. Now, I’m not against epistolary novels, but something about this one didn’t really click with me for some reason. <i>Taken Away</i> follows the story of two young boys in the foster system after their mother has been arrested for theft.

Both Isaac and Victor find themselves separated, sent to completely different homes and forced to acclimate to a new life without each other. As for their sisters, the two girls have been placed in the same foster home but separate from their brothers. Ironically, though, we rarely hear about them at all throughout the course of the novel.

I genuinely believe that this is a story that needs to be told, that young children in these situation should have access to books they can relate to. However, I’m not sure how much this book is going to do. It’s very short, follows a rather frustrating format that doesn’t really allow for the most realistic of depictions. Not only are the e-mails not what I would expect from an 11 and 12 year old, but they also force the author to relay certain details in a manner which frankly just wouldn’t happen.

When I reached the end of the novel, I felt lost as though the other half of the book had somehow not been included by some potential computer error. It was such an odd place to end the book, leaving a rather ridiculous cliffhanger and not really offering a whole lot of closure for anything.

We’re left in limbo just as the characters are, wondering where the story will go and what will happen next. And frankly, though I feel this could represent a sort of metaphor for how it feels to be in the foster system, I’m just not entirely sure that’s really all too helpful to kids reading this book because they relate to it. I doubt they need yet another thing in their life to simply be hanging up in the air and them helpless to do anything about it.

There wasn’t really any time for the characters to develop, but I hope they would have if there had been. And I guess, at the end of the day, <i>Taken Away </i>needed a lot more depth and length to it than it had and unfortunately the book suffered greatly for it.

<i>I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

I was not a big fan of this book. I felt that it wasn’t very well written. The story itself is good and I think it will be a good story for my students to have. It is a short read and interesting enough to keep the attention of reluctant readers.

I recieved an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book (and its sequels) are being published with foster-care children as their target readers. Which I think is an awesome thing to do, but the execution wasn't my favorite.

First, this book was too short, and its length wasn't used well. It's just an exchange of emails between two brothers who have been separated and gone to different foster care homes. All we see of these characters are really small, dull snippets of their lives. One of them had a fight with a classmate and made a new friend and lives with a family that cares for him, the other thinks one of his neighbors is a werewolf and goes out at night with a friend to prove this. But that's it, there are no feelings to the memories they tell each other, it's just narrated anecdotically and I didn't really feel anything while reading it. The ending was too abrupt and it didn't feel like an ending.

There was a multimedia thing going on, since all contact these boys have are through emails. They often send "photos" and "links". The photos are just Microsoft Paint stick drawings, but that's NEVER addressed and it's kinda weird bc they're being treated like photos (of the boys and their friends, of places they went to when they were little and things they bought) but there's NO WAY these kids with a daily one hour access to a laptop are getting pictures with ANY device, or kept older photos, since the laptops aren't theirs. The links lead to nowhere. I felt betrayed. I hope they're up by the time this book comes out, I wish I could read about werewolves and PB cookies. It would've made it more immersive.

I think there were some wicked mechanics between the brothers, and I don't think if they're suitable for children or not. IDK if this is a thing, but here we talk about a dominant twin and a submissive twin -socially, that is. It was never addressed whether these boys are twins or not (I think they aren't) but Victor said some things to Isaac that just... weren't nice. Isaac (Isaak? Now I'm in doubt) would tell V he had cried in front of his foster mother bc he missed his biological mother, and Victor would just send three pages of an email that just said "You can't cry in front of her. She has no right to know what you're feeling. If you cry in front of her, you'll come to love her. You can't love her. She's not your mother, and you will forget momma if you think this other woman is". This was repeated several times throughout the book (and it's short, so these things were like 1/4 of the book), and it just feels manipulative and abusive to me. I get Victor was scared, but he had no right to tell Isaac these things. And, by the way Isaac answered, this had been going on for a while.

Also, the book had no subplots whatsoever, and the main plot was "I miss mom" "don't miss mom" "shut up you miss mom too" "yes I doo but we mustn't" "okay but I miss mom". Which I get so much bc I was a kid who missed mom while I was in kindergarten, and even know when I'm away for uni I miss her a lot, but if your book has less than 90 pages and "I miss mom" is all your characters are saying, please stop. There are two sisters we know nothing about. There's Stephanie, and Lucky, and Jake we know nothing about. There are three foster parents and a foster family we know nothing about. You created this whole world for two kids to be lost in and you shrink it to the maximum by having the emails be so repetitive. It's almost boycotting your own story.

TL;DR it meant well, but it was badly executed.

My understanding is that this collection is intended to appeal to middle-grade struggling readers, and I think that in that way I think this first installment is successful. The email format and short length will appeal to readers who are intimidated by lengthy novels, and many of my students will relate to the various themes addressed (poverty, parental incarceration, death of a parent, bullying). The drawings are a cute touch, as well.

But there isn't much here as far as substance. I like that both sides of foster care are shown--the good and the bad--but there isn't a lot of story here for readers who like a little more depth. The surface-level interactions don't hold much emotion and I didn't feel much of a connection with either of the boys, but perhaps that will be different for younger readers. I also wish that the actual pictures attached to the emails were shown as opposed to just hearing the boys' reactions to them (I don't know if that was just an ARC thing or not--it would definitely add a lot to the story if they actually existed.)

This book is honest, gritty and real.
I especially enjoyed the different perspectives in the book, the younger and the older really made it clear how different aged children see the world,

Easy to read and something that should be on all high-school library shelves.

written in emails sent among siblings i found it a little hard to get used to. it was a good enough book but not really my format.

It is important for all children to be able to find themselves in the books they read, because if they don't they feel that their life is not important enough or "normal " enough to have been written about. This is why it is <strong>so</strong> important to tell all the stories.

That being said, what 44 Books publishers is doing is making easy to read middle grade books for at-risk youth. This means, children who have been put into foster care. Children who have had to move in with relatives because their parents can't care for them any more, children who are living in poverty. The point is, letting them see that their life can be reflected in books.

However, this particular book is <em>JUST</em> about being put into foster care. So far, there is no other part to the plot. The story, told in a series of emails back and forth, between two brothers, reflects their every day lives, and worries about their mother and their other siblings. That is the entire story.

It is a shame there isn't more there, there. That there isn't something else, besides missing their mothers. That there isn't a sub plot even. Perhaps it is because this is going to be a series of four books, and each one will follow the four siblings. But the first one never got past the "I hate foster care" and "I miss my mother". If this is meant for that particular audience, they have already lived that, and are living it.

For a good story about how foster care can go wrong, there is <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1660701474?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1" target="_blank"> My name is Leon</a> or for a foster care story that has a subplot to it, there is <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2118265557" target="_blank"> The Disappearance</a>.

I commend the publisher from reaching out to at-risk youth, but hope that this series either gets stronger, or more interesting, or both.

#TakenAway #NetGalley

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

'Taken Away' by Cyn Bermudez is an 80 page collection of emails between two brothers who have recently been brought into the foster care system. As someone who has no experience with foster care or adoption I was interested in seeing things from this perspective however I found some major issues with this novella. Let me start with the positives.

This book has been well edited and despite my reading it as an ARC I found no grammatical errors. The plot itself was realistic, with the children being placed in different foster homes having different experiences. It also had the beginnings of an emotional read, and despite my problems with the book I did feel the sadness and anger of the characters as well as sympathise with their situation.

As for the not so great things, I found the characters unrealistically juvenile and well-spoken, the book was too short, and there was a whole lot of "remember when". I understand that Isaac was only 11 and Victor was 12 but I have never met an 11 or 12 year old who is a) consistently nice to their siblings, b) writes emails with perfect grammar and convention or c) never swears or uses slang. Now I may just be a total bogan (Australian for redneck or chav), but being a teenager myself I am fully aware of how we tend to write emails and I can honestly say that preteen boys do not use phrases like "it's like that bowling ball is sitting on my chest" or "I push my tears down as far as they can go". The most slang that these boys used was "gotta", and I am most certainly stereotyping but both their socioeconomic background and age they shouldn't be so well spoken.



While I can say that I don't know anyone going through what they are, I have never seen siblings who are so consistently nice to each other. They don't really argue over anything and instead write lengthy descriptions of their new friends and neighbours. I also found it quite unrealistic that they weren't more angry with the situation. Isaac seemed immature and both boys were written in such a mindset that I would think they are maybe 7 or 8, believing in werewolves and using spiderman as a point of reference.

The emails also often spoke of "remember when" type situations which were used as a way to introduce the backstory of the characters. I think that this the classic 'show, not tell' technique should have been employed by weaving this information into the general email instead of obviously pointing out the information. It would have made for a much more interesting read as well as preventing the sort of formulaic construction that began to emerge.

At only 80 pages I think that the book could have been longer, leaving more time and space for the characters and their stories to develop since the book was at its most interesting towards the final few emails. I understand that it is part of a four book series, and while I haven't read the rest I think that I would likely find that they all could have been one book.

I would like to thank NetGalley, West 44 Books and Cyn Bermudez for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.