Review: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Official Synopsis:

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.

Pages: 457

Published by: Putnam Juvenile (May 7th, 2013)

Genre: YA science fiction/dystopian

My rating for The 5th Wave:

3.5 rounding to 4 great stars!

When I found out this was a book about aliens invading earth, I was dead set on loving this book! Aliens is one of my favorite sci-fi elements. Although I definitely loved a lot of this book, I can't say it satisfied all those reading hot spots for me.

The 5 Star elements of the book:

-Creativity/Concept/Apocalyptic World: Aliens taking over earth and eliminating humanity in waves. 1st: Turn off the electricity. 2nd: Wipe out all coastal cities. 3rd: Spread an illness that will take the population down to 2% of humanity. 4th: Send out the Silencers. 5th? To come... Brilliant! Being introduced to this world messed with my mind like no other! Their was kind of an info dump on the Waves during the first 100 pages, but I found it necessary to build the setting and give me a feel for what living then was like--which I most definitely did! As I imagined putting myself in Cassie's shoes, I seriously got the heebeegeebees and had to set the book down 10 pages in! At the same time, the world entranced me to read more.

-Cassie: Her voice/the author's voice is so strong! It's sarcastic and funny and quite frankly, I haven't felt an author's voice as strong as Rick Yancey's when he is writing from Cassie's POV. Cassie was a good balance of mental and emotional strength as well as weakness. She wasn't a total kick*** and she also had many moments of doubt, but her will power is extraordinary. I loved reading a character like her, someone who isn't always confident, but clearly does what she believes is right.

"Well that's good, we thought. This silence is deafening. Why did they come billions of miles just to stare at us? It's rude."

-Yancey's writing: He put some great humor into this dark and dooming book perfectly.

"Speaking of fruit, I'm down--I mean, he's down--to his underwear."

The dialogue was always purposeful and I love this particular description:

"It's been a long time since humans were prey animals. A hundred thousand years or so. But buried deep in our genes the memory remains: the awareness of the gazelle, the instinct of the antelope. The wind whispers through the grass. A shadow flits between the trees. And up speaks the little voice that goes, 'Shhhh, it's close now. Close.'"

The Lower-star elements:

-POV changes: At one point, there were 5 different POVs. They were disconnecting me from the story a bit because the first 100 pages is ALL Cassie, then other POVs were thrown into the book. I became a little impatient, wanting to read more from Cassie's POV since I connected with her in the beginning. The last half of the book only alternates between 2 POVs so those sections were a lot smoother and kept my interest better.

-Grammatical errors: Throughout the first couple chapters, as I was still trying to wrap my mind around this world, there were a couple instances where I was confused on what tense the book was in. I caught some past tense sentences in there every now and then, along with what I thought were incomplete sentences. But the incomplete sentences may have just been the way Cassie speaks, so after the beginning, I didn't notice sentence structures anymore.

-Pacing of the plot: This one is a tough one for me because I'm really not sure how I feel about the pacing of the story. It was definitely slow in a lot of parts. I don't think it was unnecessary; however, that doesn't exclude the fact that some chapters were a little boring. In the end, I didn't really mind the pacing, especially because it ended fast-paced, but I wouldn't say the pacing deserves 5 stars.

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Although sometimes slow-going, the plot was great with twists and reveals. The romance was satisfying and the characters and how they acted in the apocalyptic world intrigued me. When I think of the book as a whole, I think, "That book was really great!" but even the best aspects of the book are tainted for me by those moments that I was a bit bored, noticed errors, and felt disconnected from the story. I hope to see more world-building, more aliens, more romance, and more reveals in the sequel, The Infinite Sea, which I am very excited for!