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The 5th Wave

 

The 5th Wave
Written by Rick Yancey

About 460 pages
Originally published in 2013
Rate 3/5

I'm not typically super into sci-fi, but this book had a really interesting concept. 

One day, an alien space ship appears in the middle of the sky. Suddenly, all the power goes out, tsunamis strike, a pandemic starts, and suddenly the aliens decide to come down and kill people themselves. 

Before the space ship appeared Cassie was a normal teenage girl worrying about normal teenage things, but now she's all alone. She wanders about the world trying to figure out what to do. Holding her younger brother's stuffed animal in her hand, she decides to find him. Ben used to be the coolest boy in the school before the space ship appeared. After his whole family dies, he ends up leading a group of kids into battle with the aliens. Evan stays hidden from the whole invasion at his cozy family farm until he sees Cassie. Sammy wonders if any promise can be kept as he waits for his sister to save him.

My thoughts on The 5th Wave

As I mentioned before, I don't typically go for these types of books, however, when there is a strong female lead you can (normally) count me in. Cassie's character was written pretty well until the last couple of pages. Majority of the story she is focused on staying alive and not trusting anyone. Then  everything that (male character) did to her before is okay once he helps her. Weird. There was also a rapey scene that didn't really get talked about at all. That made me uncomfortable. The romance in this book is not it and I understand it's not a romance book, but that scene was wild.

Having multiple point of views was really fun and interesting. If it was all from Cassie's perspective then I might have gotten bored a lot quicker. There were some interesting twists, but some scenes dragged out for too long. The 5th Wave has a lot of really nice elements to it, but overall it was boring.  Most of the time the characters were traveling and or trying to escape from something. Everything felt like it was out of the characters' control until the end, but that was annoyingly convenient. 

Movie Trailer


Quotes

"How do you rid the Earth of humans? Rid the humans of their humanity." (12)
"I felt that, when it came to God there was a broken promise in there somewhere." (61)
"But love is a weapon they have no answer for. They know how you think, but they can't know what you feel." (373)
"Beneath a sky crowded with a billion stars. I don't care what the stars say about how small we are. One, even the smallest, weakest, most insignificant one matters." (455)

Links

Rick Yancey website
Amazon: The 5th Wave

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