Review: The 5th Wave

The 5th Wave 
Rick Yancey 
457 page (Hardcover) 
Putman Juvenile
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Blurb: 

The Passage meets Ender’s Game in an epic new series from award-winning author Rick Yancey.

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.

Now, it’s the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie’s only hope for rescuing her brother—or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up. 

Review:

The 5th Wave was even better than I was expecting it to be, and I was expecting a lot. I haven't read a whole lot of alien books in the past, but this one stood out compared to those that I have read. It was well-paced, fresh, and that was one badass alien invasion.

I really enjoyed the sheer amount of thought that must have been put into imagining  the post-invasion world. It was just so well-thought out, with so many details. There were a few things that I probably never would have consider, but that really added to the novel. I loved every detail that Rick Yancey deigned to give us readers, savoring absolutely everything even when it was an awful detail that killed me.

Which brings me to the fact that I would never want to live in this book. Ever. The end of the world wasn't coming. No, it had already come and gone and anyone left was still there because of pure bad luck. But I loved watching the characters fight to live and do what was right in that horrible messed up world. It really gave me something to cheer and hope for.

I also really loved seeing the characters grow throughout the story. Each of them got so much stronger as they kept trying to fight back And some of the twists in the plot had me understanding the hardships the characters were going through At points, I didn't know if I should cheer them on or shout out to warn them that they were being tricked (only to find out I was way off anyways).

So the book was pretty spectacular, aside from the fact that when the point of view switched the first few times, it left me feeling a bit lost. But once I understood what was going on, I saw how necessary the change was. It added to the story rather than detracting from it.

Overall, I give it a hangover level of 5 out of 5.

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