Four out of five stars

After the first wave, mankind lost technology. After the second they were lucky to be alive. After the third, they were unlucky to have survived. After the fourth, they lost trust in humanity. Now,  they wait for the fifth wave. They don’t know what it is; they don’t know when it will come, or how it will affect them. What they do know is that it is coming, and there is no way to stop it.

Cassie has rules. Trust no one. Depend on no one. Survive long enough to save her brother. This worked for her; it has kept her alive, until she meets Evan Walker. With him, she may have a better chance rescuing her brother. With him, she may learn to trust again. With him, she may find the will to stand back up when life knocks her down.

The 5th Wave is what I call a cookie cutter book, cut from the same cloth as the Hunger Games, Divergent or any other dystopian novel that have come out of the publishing companies in the last couple of years. But at the same time, it’s different, strange and new, which makes it worth the read. Unlike the other series that focus on humanity essentially killing themselves off out of greed power and money, this book focuses on the unknown, the scary the extra-terrestrial. In so many other books, humanity is the scariest part about our future. We worry that we cannot control ourselves. Rick Yancey gives readers a break from being scared of ourselves, and lets us
be scared of something we cannot even think to be real.

Although the book didn’t hook me right from the first page, the struggle through the first couple of chapters was worth it in the end. Yancey kept me on the edge of my seat frantically turning the pages, not able to read fast enough to cure my desire to know what would happen next. I sighed, laughed, screamed out loud and prayed that the characters would get over their bout of stupidity and run. But most importantly, the second I finished the book I ran inside to my computer to desperately look up when the second book was to be released. That, in my opinion is always the deciding factor on how good a book is, that and the heart dropping feeling I felt when I learned that I would in fact have to wait until July of 2015 to get my hands on book number two.