The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey: Review

Title: The 5th Wave
Author: Rick Yancey
Publisher: Penguin Books 
Buy this book: Amazon / Book Depository 

The Passage meets The Hunger Games in a gripping new series from Carnegie-shortlisted 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. 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, until Cassie meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan may be her only hope for rescuing her brother and even saving herself. Now she must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up. Cassie Sullivan gets up. 

Yes, I'm really late to The 5th Wave party. Fashionably so, if you ask me at least. I was actually nervous to read it, which probably explains why it has taken me so long to get to it. It feels like the hype surrounding it just gets bigger the more time that goes by, especially with a movie adaptation in the works. The more amazing things I heard about it, the more I put off reading it. Too often I feel disappointed in a read that is being seen as the next big thing. The hype doesn't seem justified and then you end up feeling like that guy, you know, the one who hates what almost everybody else loved. But, thankfully, I actually did really enjoy The 5th Wave.

I haven't read many alien invasion books, at least not many that I can remember. I liked the idea of the different waves of the invasion. Although, I must admit, the virus aspect of it had me wanting to vomit because the descriptions were too detailed for me. This book kept me reading because I wanted to find out more. No matter how much I found out, there were still questions that needed answering and I was desperate for those answers. I wanted to know why the aliens were there, what they wanted and what the end goal was.


I know that my feelings for The 5th Wave changed a lot over the course of the novel. I had a much higher opinion of it at the beginning, but by the halfway mark I started to enjoy it less. That probably had more to do with Cassie than anything else. I really loved her character in the beginning, she seemed so strong and determined. She's surviving on her own, with no idea if there is even another human being alive, and unable to trust that any human she does come across is actually even human. In the beginning I really loved her because of her strength, determination and will to survive.

'I am the one not running, not staying, but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.'

My Evan feels.

My problems with the book started as soon as Cassie was brought together with Evan Walker. Her character changes so much after that, she loses so much of who she was at the beginning. I don't think that would have bothered me so much, if it wasn't for the fact that it's for a guy who is beyond creepy. The romance aspect between then is just so wrong, it feels so horribly forced and doesn't work at all. Evan is probably one of the creepiest guys I've come across, he stands outside of any room she is for ridiculously long periods of time, just listening to her. He's been watching and following her, so he's basically her stalker, not her romantic love interest. I was hoping an alien would suddenly appear and blast his face off, maybe then Cassie would go back to being the tough girl she was at the start of the book.


I was also surprised that we don't just stay with Cassie in this book, we get another characters narrative as well. I was a little surprised when that happened, but at least it was a way to get away from Cassie for a while once she started to bug me. We get Ben's story, who's found himself at a camp, where he is training to kill the aliens. Everyone at the camp gets the world's crappiest nicknames though - Ben is Zombie, then we have people like Oompah, Teacup, Dumbo, Tank, Flintstone and so on. Those are just terrible! Why would anyone want to be known by such awful nicknames. I just read Zombie as Ben every time because otherwise it would have drove me crazy.

I enjoyed the book, but I definitely wouldn't count it as a favourite. I liked the mystery aspect when it came to the aliens, the questions that their invasion raised. Wanting to get answers to my questions is probably what kept me reading. I did feel that there were quite a few plot holes in this, things that didn't completely make sense. The main one was the fact that the first wave got rid of electric and all methods of communication. But by the end of the 4th wave, Cassie and everyone all know the statistics of how many people have died across the world. HOW?!? How do you have such detailed statistics about the waves when you have no way of communicating.

 4/5 Butterflies

This was an enjoyable start to a series and had me itching to pick up the next book and see what would happen next. I was disappointed with how Cassie changed over the course of the book, I didn't like seeing her suddenly become weak and dependent as soon as she finds a guy. I was also left confused by some of the plot holes in this book and unanswered questions. I don't think it lived up to the giant hype surrounding it, but it is an enjoyable read and I will be continuing the series.