The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey Review

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
(The 5th Wave #1)
Release Date: May 7th, 2013
Publisher: Putnam Juvenile; 457 pages

The Passage meets Ender’s Game in an epic new series from award-winning author 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.

Aliens.  Everyone has their own theories about them.  Some people think they exist and others think that they don't.  For those that do think they exist, the physical appearance of them is sort of up to them.  Some picture little green people with big heads and huge eyes.  But others think that they look just humans.  In the 5th Wave aliens, or as the main character Cassie calls them, the Others look just like us.  Now as an avid reader, I have had some paranormal thoughts.  I have wondered about a zombie apocalypse breaking out, a plague spreading, an alien invasion, etc.  And I am not gonna lie the thought scares the crap out of me, but at the same time it excites me as well.  But I think it's mostly the fear of the unknown that scares me.  I've read only a handful of books with an alien invasion, seen a couple of movies.  But hands down this is one of the best.

We live in a society that is ruled by technology.  And during the 1st wave, that is pretty much wiped out.  The closest that that has happened to me was during Hurricane Sandy last year.  I didn't have electricity for 4 days.  But my phone still worked, and I did have access to power because my job had electricity.  But in this book everything electric is lost, including things battery operated such as cars.

But before any of this started Cassie was pretty much your standard high school student.  She went to school, had a crush on a popular boy, has an adorable little brother, and pretty much had a decent home life.  Then one day in the sky the Others mothership appeared.  Now imagine this happening, what would you do?  You wake up one morning and a huge space ship is in the sky.  It's not attacking you, it's just sitting there.  Personally I know I would panic, because I can be pretty paranoid.  Cassie's neighbor decided to pack their entire family up and head to Disney World.  At first I laughed.  I laughed a lot when I read this.  But then I started to think about it, and if you feel like you may only have a few days left to live wouldn't it be nice to do whatever you wanted until what you would consider to be your impending death?  Yeah Disney World is sounding really nice right now.

It took a few days before the 1st wave to hit after the mothership appeared.  And with each wave, the human population rapidly decreased.  And at the start of the novel we are at the 5th wave.  The circumstances of the first four waves are told in flashbacks.  The novel begins with Cassie in the forest alone.  One of the things I immediately grasped on while reading was the realism of the characters.  Cassie is easily likeable.  She has just the right amount of snark.  Also Rick Yancey reminds you of things that are almost never mentioned during an end of the world scenario.  Who would have thought it would be a male to remember toiletries?  Seriously if the apocalypse is ever among us, I am grabbing toilet paper.

Surprisingly Cassie's point of view is not the only point of view in the novel.  We get a few other point of views as well.  As I've mentioned before in reviews, this is either hit or miss.  I personally found it to be a huge hit.  I loved the other characters just as much as Cassie.  And when each characters story starts to come together, it makes for an amazing read.  I ran through so many emotions while reading.  I clapped, cheered, teared up, and laughed while reading.  That doesn't really happen to me.  I think that it was pretty unique for the author to capture both humor and fear in the same book.

This book makes you think.  This story made me think that there could be so much going on that we are unaware of.  As humans we are predictable.  So can we be mimicked?  I also love how the fact that aliens are glamorized in pop culture is pointed out.  The idea of invasions has been made into movies for decades.  It gets people excited, but we don't always see the fear.  This book didn't give me nightmares, but it just started to make me aware.

Unfortunately though I feel like if I go into more detail about the 5th Wave it would spoil it.  There was a moment towards the beginning of the book, that when it occurred I put the book the book down and exclaimed, "Oh my gosh!  How did I not see that coming?  The clues were right there!"  But it was such a great a moment, and it's better to experience for yourself.  So I urge you to pick up the 5th Wave, if you haven't already.  Because this book has definitely made my top 3 books of this year.  And I can't wait for the sequel!