Review: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (WOW, GREAT Title! Aliens + Dystopian done right*****)

Title: The 5th Wave
Author: Rick Yancey
Series: The Fifth Wave
Book #: 1
Pages: 457
Reading Level:YA
Book Rating: 
Goodreads Rating: 4.12
Published: May 7th, 2013.

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.

Taschima's POV:

I think this book just blew my mind. You know how there are those novels who are the epitome of their genre? The 5th Wave is just that. The epitome of contemporary YA sci-fi with a splash of dystopian. It was pretty epic, pretty wonderful and heartbreaking and fucked up in the best possible way. I guess you could say I am a little in love with it (the teddy bear knows all, I loved it with all my being).

At first I was all like, this is going a bit too slow. And the world was so complicated, and who is the bad guy again? What is going on?! But then I thought, complicated? Talk about world building! It was amazing the amount of detail Rick Yancey would add seamlessly into the story. Keeps you guessing, at the edge of your seat, biting your nails from the excitement and praying to whatever the hell you believe in that this never happens to you.

Some words of caution. The beginning, at least for me, was a tad slow going. But don't get discouraged!! It is well worth it and it starts picking up the pace quite quickly. Another thing I should warn you about? Different POVs. It totally blindsided me! When the new POV started I was very confused, and wondering why my character didn't make any sense. How the hell could she had gotten where she was at? But then I started to get it was a different character, a male, and backtracked. After that it wasn't very difficult to tell which character was taking control of the story.

Cassie, the first POV and main character overall, is a very tough cookie. Hardcore, a survivor. I don't know if a male writer might have influenced this, maybe he couldn't have pulled off writing a girly girl without us rolling our eyes, but that's okay by me. I prefer the kick ass chicks anyways. Cassie is on a mission to keep a promise she made to her little brother, who has been taken away from her. She will find him again if it's the last thing she does, and in this world it may as well be. Besides Cassie there is Zombie, our second POV. He is a guy who pretty much had to be built from the ground up. Looks and charms were not going to cut it in this world and he learned that the hardest way possible. Together their POVs are able to built this complicated, and fascinating world that is unlike any other quite honestly. I kept trying to make connections with other titles, like The Host (Stephenie Meyer) for example, but I just couldn't. It is that awesome.

Finally, you get to meet Evan Walker. Evan is the strong farm boy with gentle hands who comes across Cassie and decides to help her out. He can at times be a little creepy, as the character notes, but he will definitely pull at your heart strings. Hell, he pulled at mine. Saying anything else would just give away the juiciness of the story, but just note that Evan is definitely someone to watch out for.

Will I read the next book? This is me when I found out there was no more to read until 2014:

At the end you will really love this book or you will hate it with all your might. Not a lot of people living in Switzerland for this one, just as with any other "big" YA novel out there. This world is situated in the "love it" camp, it was just aliens done right to the 5th wave capacity.


ARC provided by publisher through BEA in exchange for an honest review.