The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Amazon Synopsis:  THE 1st WAVE 

Took out half a million people.

THE 2nd WAVE 
Put that number to shame.

THE 3rd WAVE 
Lasted a little longer. Twelve weeks . . . Four billion dead.

IN THE 4th WAVE, 
You can't trust that people are still people.

AND THE 5th WAVE? 
No one knows.But it's coming.

On a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs.

Runs from the beings that only look human, who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan may be her only hope. Now Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

**Spoiler free review but do not read if you want to read this book with no knowledge of anything to do with the actual potential story line**

Ridiculous amounts of people raved about this book for the last couple months and it seems the TBR Jar of Destiny (official name from now on) also wanted me to experience it. My mum read it before me and now asks every person she comes into contact with "Have you heard of The 5th Wave?" It seemed like the right time to know what she was worshipping.

With a weird and ambiguous synopsis, I went into this blind. The hype, unfortunately, meant I had expectations and a plot in my mind. For this reason I was expecting a lost yet tough girl meeting a dark and brooding man before they fell in love and kicked alien arse. This did not happen. In fact, there are 4 separate narratives throughout this book, which confused the hell out of me at the end of part 1considering I was just getting into Cassie's storyline. Only 1 narrative other than Cassie's is really important and consistent though. Actually, Zombie's (just a nickname) story line features more than Cassie's and in bigger chunks.

This other narrative resembles a less sucky version of Ender's Game. Many have made this comparison and praised the author for it but I am not a lover of the Ender's Game book and therefore was a bit bored during this section. It made me crave for more Cassie... that is until she was reintroduced and her story developed. Enter some romantic creepiness! The love story for this book is not so much an epic love story in a time of devastation so much as a guy who bakes bread lingering outside a door more than is considered healthy. The in-my-mind version of Evan was more witty, haunted and mysterious. This means that when we are introduced to a mixture of the baker from Cinderella II and the Child Catcher, the interest levels I held for this book fell. I do not find a guy randomly washing someones hair an attractive quality in book characters.

Aside from the changes in voice and weird lover boy Evan, this books writing style was amazing. The style of writing changes throughout, with each voice taking on a different tone and technique. Having never read any of Yancey's books before, this was a really nice surprise. He intricately places hints within each of the 13 parts which help you create the world they live in and how they are adapting on both sides of the war. That the stories overlap is a bigger bonus. You are not bombarded with a one sided narrative that is bias to events. Yancey proves himself to be a talented writer with this novel and I may pick up another of his series... one maybe without aliens.

The characters themselves were really well written. As a reader I could really imagine how they were feeling in this almost post apocalyptic world. Cassie was a character I should have grown annoyed at but didn't. Her rudeness to some people was drowned out by her hilarious inner monologue and experiences that called for action. Zombie was a bit more boring but I was still able to sympathise with him but I blame the circumstances he was in for that since it reminded me of, I will say it again, Ender's Game. The extra characters sometimes had stupid names that I did not understand but they each had an incredibly different personality and back story which was good.

Maybe it was the aliens? Maybe it was the overwhelming hype? Maybe it was the weird nicknames? I don't know but it seems I did not connect with this story the way others have. Does not mean I am not going to read the sequal and did not mean I did not enjoy it, because I did!

Rating: 4/5