Author: Rick Yancey
Series: The 5th Wave #1
Publication Date: May 7th, 2013
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
Number of Pages: 480
Genre: Sci-fi, Adventure, Dystopian, Romance, YA
Source: Library
Links: Goodreads | Amazon | The Book Depository
Summary
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
*coughs I finished this a while ago but I forgot to post it*
The 5th Wave is a dystopian sci-fi. I was originally of the opinion that I was going to read a lot of other stuff because the dystopian setting has been kind of…… overused. To be honest, the reason I read this was so I could go see the movie when it comes out.
(By the way, I am not happy about the casting for the movie.)
But this is about the book. So I shall ramble less.
The book is confusing. Well, not the story but rather, when there’s a sudden POV change. Like what? I’m sitting here reading when suddenly the perspective changes and I panic and think that I somehow managed to skip fifty pages or something. Or that Cassie has some random sister that I don’t know anything about. And yes, there was the change from part 1 to part 2, but I stopped reading and picked the book up again right at that section. I thought that my bookmark had been placed wrong. The change in POV from first to third really does not do anything to distinguish between the characters. Cassie is written from 1st person POV and the other person in 3rd person. However, they both sound exactly the same.
Cassie was somewhat bland. She’s got her head screwed on right and she’s most certainly not the stupidest character in YA but she’s not exactly the most entertaining narrator. Some of it could be attributed to the really dead feeling of the setting but in general, her voice came across as dull. I think it’s pretty bad if the only thing I really remember about her was her loyalty to her brother. May I remind you that I finished this less than two weeks ago?
She did have some sarcastic jokes though.
The “plot-twist” at the end about the “mysterious” Evan was very very predictable. I caught it from a mile away and cheered when I got it right. He’s a decent character, albeit a little too perfect. He is very Gary Stu-y at times. Very. It’s the precise reason that I kind of wanted him to betray Cassie.
Also, he’s supposed to be 18/19 (or something like that) but he sounds like a 20+ year old. The entire time I was reading, I was ew-ing at the fact that it felt like there was a 10 year difference between them.
But maybe it was intentional. I have a somewhat sound reason, but I afraid that it would spoil the book.
As mentioned above, the setting of the book is very dead. It feels like Cassie is the only person left on the planet (although we all know that she isn’t) and although I like how it matches, I also feel like it reduces the suspense. This book had a lot of potential for suspense but it fell flat.
Dancing Through the Pages 
This one never really captured my interest, so I haven’t read it. I hear mixed reviews, so I’m glad that I skipped it.
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For me, when I finished it, I was really excited about picking up the next book. But then when I looked back on it, I found that it wasn’t as good as I had initially thought. One of the main reasons I read this was because they are releasing the movie next year.
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