Two Review: The 5th Wave by 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. – Goodreads

I loved this one. Not head-over-heels, shout-it-from-the-rooftops-and-carry-a-boombox kind of love, but I did enjoy it and will be recommending it to others.

For starters, I liked the originality of the alien attacks. I liked the mystery surrounding the aliens. I liked how dark and gritty it was—it was real. There is no such thing as a happy ending when most of the world’s population has been wiped out.

In the first wave, the power grid goes out. Cars, computers, cell phones—zap. Done. In the second wave, the aliens mess with the fault lines and wipe out the coasts. In the third wave, a terrible plague. In the fourth wave, the Silencers—alien assassins sent to pick off the survivors.

It’s now time for the 5th wave.

I was constantly on the edge of my seat for this one—biting my nails for each of the characters that spoke. The book is told from four points-of-view—Cassie, Zombie, Sammy, and Evan. It’s awesome. Usually I would hate that style, but Rick Yancey does it right. It works really, really well.

I loved the character development. I was very attached to all of the main characters—I was rooting for them, worried for them, sad for them. Their personalities are portrayed very well—but it was their emotions that really got me.

In all, I rated this a 4/5 and definitely recommend! There is some talk of sex and limited use of the F word, so I would recommend 15+.

This book was so different than any other dystopian/alien story I’ve ever read and I loved it for that! The characters were all different and it was interesting to see the different takes from each of them throughout the story.

The way the aliens did things – the waves that they sent to Earth – were so real it was creepy. If aliens actually did show up, this is exactly how I’d picture them doing things and that freaks me out. The first wave, when the power grid goes out, was the freakiest because the power in our town kept going out while we were reading it. Lauren & I joked a lot about how the Others had finally arrived but truthfully – it could really happen.

Overall, the story was really good. It was full of suspense and right as something was about to happen, it would jump to another character – normally I hate this, Yancy did it right and kept me interested for the entire book. Seeing how different age groups, genders, etc. viewed the entire situation was also really nice – we were experiencing it from many different points instead of a stagnant single one.

I rated The 5th Wave 4/5 on Goodreads and I DEFINITELY recommend it!