The 5th Wave and 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge Part 6

Well, it’s hard to describe how I shop for books because I shop several different ways.

That’s how I shop for Books! 🙂

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.

I’ve seen this book all over the YA book world lately.  So when I saw this book on the “Lucky Day”* shelf at my local library I picked it up, not really sure even what it was about, much less what to expect.

*At my local library, they do this thing where they take popular books with huge waiting lists and have them on display for regular people to check out.  You can’t renew them, so you have to read them quicker than other library books, but you still get them for a bit.  I think it’s neat because I’m really bad about getting on waiting lists! 🙂

Yancey started off with an amazing, needs to be explored more, premise; a dystopian world destroyed by aliens.  Yancey’s world is realistically terrifying.  It preys on the flaws in human nature and points out that it’s doing so.  The plot of this story melded together as the characters goals gradually became the same things.  This book was written in four different points of view, although 95%* (*Not a real statistic, my guess) was really only from two of the characters points of view.  I found that the switch between POV’s was pretty seamless.  I didn’t go more than a couple sentences before realizing who was talking.  The end of this book wrapped up the story just enough to not kill me, but still left the tiniest bit of mystery that I hope to see in following books.

**** I wanted to link down from the blurb, because I want to criticize it.  The blurb talks only of Cassie and Evan, where as the book is about so much more than just them.  In my opinion Cassie and Ben are  joint protagonists, and I think that it was unwise and a mistake to not include him in the blurb.

In the beginning, Cassie does a lot of set up for the story, going back in her memories to give a first hand account of certain events, before returning to the present.  I found that Yancey brought a strong voice to Cassie and it was a clever way to tell the past while telling the story.

At the end of the book there is obvious tension between the Ben/Cassie/Evan situation, although it never interfered with the story going on, it just was a little red herring for future books.**

Cassie is often critical of herself and of her mistakes, certainly with her trusting Evan, and yet she never gives up on her promises, making her a surviver.  She was lovely to read about.

Ben acts like a typical boy would in an apocalyptic situation, although at a certain point he changes his mind and decides to go with what is obviously the truth.

Ben refuses to forgive himself for the mistakes he’s made, and yet he doesn’t let himself make them again.  In such dark times he manages to keep his humanity.

**Besides the whole Ben/Cassie/Evan problem, there is also the whole Ben/Ringer situation, which will affect the Ben/Cassie/Evan thing.  All of this will likely be expanded in later books.

While I found Cassie to be ruthless with her own life for the sake of a loved one, Ben did the same for some one he didn’t know as well.  Learning from what he’d done, he certainly didn’t make the same mistake again, making him wiser and braver than Cassie or the old Ben Parish.

 When I found out that the second POV was Ben Parish, I almost died, after hearing Cassie go on and on about him! 😀

*END SPOILER* 

*When we first hear from Evan we don’t quite know it’s him.*  The entire book his suspicious, a liar, and such a bad boy.  Except you wouldn’t think of him as a bad boy, you’d think of him as an adorable farm boy.

Evan’s secrets eventually catch up with him, although he never loses what he makes the decision to protect, no matter what the cost to himself.

Sammy only talks to us once, giving us a taste of a terrified little boy who becomes courageous. He also is certainly the object that connects all our characters together, making him vital to the story.

His development isn’t really in himself, as much as how he changes the people he meets.

This alien dystopian novel has moved it’s way to the top of my favorites list.  With it’s completely original characters and plot, I was caught up in every bit of this story, making it something that everyone should read.