Book Talk - The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Oh my goodness. This book was amazing. Sooooooooo amazing. Boy, do I have a lot to say! It was always too hard to put this book down. Before reading The 5th Wave, I'd heard that it was really good. I was not disappointed. It will be interesting to see the movie.

This book is about a girl named Cassie -- short for Cassiopeia. She is living her completely normal teenage life, until an alien mothership arrives close to earth. Nobody knows what they want or why they are there. Until the planet is under attack. The Others (the aliens) goal: to rid the planet of the human species. And let me just say, The Others are smart! They attack in "Waves". The first wave gets rid of all electricity and stops anything cars, planes, etc, from functioning. This may not sound too bad, but considering the way we live today, this drove many people insane, terrifying many people. The second Wave was an actual wave -- a tsunami. I thought this was somewhat ironic. This wiped out everyone who lived on the coastline. The third wave was disease. A nasty plaque that almost no one could recover from. The fourth wave, well, this one is hard to explain. Basically, the aliens, in 1995 or sometime back then, had put themselves in some humans. These aliens who were "inside" some humans, were awoken for the fourth wave. When they came to life, they started killing a large number of people. And the fifth wave, well, this is very hard to explain. I don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't read it. So... read the book!!

To start off, I have to say that I loved Rick Yancey's writing style! He has a way of making you feel like you are almost actually in the book. Whatever the characters start to feel, you feel it too. It's truly awesome.

CAUTION: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD.

My favourite character from the book was Cassie -- obviously!!! She was very strong, mentally and emotionally and was able to keep herself together throughout the book. Think about it. There are aliens on earth and everyone that Cassie knows could possibly be dead. She may be the last human on earth, but she still holds on and fights for her life. She is so brave. Another quality I really liked about Cassie was how observant she was. Cassie is really perceptive and I really like reading about protagonists like that. For example, when she was sleeping with Evan and noticed that his hands were very soft, too soft for all the work he'd done around the farm after so many years. She was pretty sure something was wrong. In the end, she was right.

Not only did I like Cassie as a protagonist, but I also really liked her as a narrator. The book was narrated from many different perspectives, but I enjoyed Cassie's narration parts the most. I found her parts the most interesting. She was also very sarcastic, which I loved.

Now to the sad part: What did I dislike about the book?

I know. It's sad. I have to come to this anyways though, I really do. My biggest complaint/problem with this book was the changing point of views. It made absolutely no sense!! I was so confused about who was narrating and I couldn't figure out that one of the narrators was Ben aka Zombie until halfway through the book when he actually mentioned his name. It drove me INSANE!! I was lost for a lot of it at first. First I'm with Cassie, as she bleeds underneath a car, then I'm suddenly with Ben, except that I didn't know that he was Ben, and then I'm with "The Silencer", or Evan, (I didn't know who it was at the time though), then I'm with Sammy. The fact that the different parts weren't labeled with the name of the narrator made it even more confusing. Agghhhh. When I first read Ben's part, I thought that he was actually Cassie and got so confused because I thought that she had a sister. There were so many times that I thought I was reading about Cassie when I was actually reading about Ben.  Eventually, I got the hang of it.

Even (or should I say Evan, hahaha) then, I'm really glad I read this book and I highly recommend it. I'm excited to see how they brought this book to life in the movie. I'd give The 5th wave 4.3 out of 5 stars. I really enjoyed it and I am excited to read The Infinite Sea!

 

Thanks for stopping and reading! Have an amazing day!

~ Pegasus