Review: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (The 5th Wave #1)

Cassie is one of the few surviviors of the alien invasion, which came in four waves, each wave damaging human populations in a different way. (Power failure, biological disasters, deadly disease, and robot soldiers.) Now, at the beginning of the fifth wave, Cassie struggles to survive as well as reunite herself with her younger brother, Charles. In order to do this, she will have to team up with Evan, who, for all she knows, could be one of Them. They are everywhere. They look like humans, act like humans... and kill like nonhumans.

Meanwhile, at a militia camp, Ben, or "Zombie", is determined to graduate to fight Them. But when he looks closer, he sees that some things don't add up, odd, unexplained things are beginning to happen. Ben is forced to accept the only possible explanation - that the fifth wave is already in motion, and this time, the enemy may be coming from the inside...

I didn't see much of the characters' personalities beyond their will to survive and their strengh. This is unfortunate and seems to be fairly normal with post-apocalyptic books. I didn't like that. I did like how Cassie continues to search for her younger brother and won't let go of his teddy bear, no matter what.

This book could be suspenseful, but it dragged sometimes and I sometimes thought that it wasn't using all the potential it had. Original with good characters. However, the narration would suddenly switch from one character to another with no warning, and you wouldn't know who was talking. That really confused me. And the love interest between Evan and Cassie is very weak and halfhearted. 3.8/5 Stars.

#aliens #theapocalypse #scifi #survival #seriesstartandstandalones