“The 5th Wave” by Rick Yancey

Age: Young Adult

Genre: Fiction, post-apocalyptic survival

Cassie is running—from everyone, from no one – and she wonders if she is the only human left alive in the world. She wanders a bleak landscape, left scarce by the alien invasion. The aliens killed her parents and the government took her little brother, who she will rescue. She promised. Sometimes she sees another human, like the guy in the abandoned convenience store, but she can’t trust him. When the aliens look just like you, how can you ever trust anyone? She shoots him and moves on. The only trust she has is in her weapon. The aliens have already plagued the earth four times, trying to eradicate humanity while leaving the Earth inhabitable for themselves. But is there a fifth wave coming? As Cassie tries to survive snipers called “Silencers” (the fourth wave) who are looking to kill all remaining humans, she wonders about the fifth wave…and keeps fighting for her life and her brother.

This book got a lot of positive press before its release, so when it came out, I was excited to read it. I’m not sure why, but I like novels, movies, and TV shows about dystopian and post-apocalyptic futures (The Hunger Games, TNT’s Falling Skies, etc.). As a fan of this genre, I was not disappointed by The 5^th Wave. It took me awhile to get into it, mostly because I found Cassie’s character so cold and distant. It’s hard to like a character you can’t warm up to. I also found it hard to grasp the comparisons between her old life and the one she now lived, but I guess she found them hard to grasp, too. Early in the book I felt like her character was confusing because of the flashes back to her old self that didn’t click with the current self, but by the end she had established herself as a strong, tough teenager. Once the author stuck with that and didn’t look back, Cassie was easier to understand. I enjoyed the intertwining story lines, though sometimes it took a little while to figure out who was talking in a particular section of the book. The story moved slowly at times, but once I got to the last 100 pages or so, it just didn’t stop. It was hard to put the book down until the end. I recommend this book to readers who like alien invasion or dystopian literature, and even though it was written for teens, as an adult, I think other adults would enjoy it, too.

Bibliographic Information:

Yancey, Rick. The 5^th Wave. New York, NY: Putnam Juvenile, 2013.

The 5^th Wave on BarnesandNoble.com