** spoiler alert ** Being a big fan of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, I thought I'd enjoy The Host just as much. Unfortunately, I didn't. In terms of the storyline itself, it was pretty good. The beginning was slow--the first time I've actually been bored while reading one of Stephenie Meyer's books. Once I got the first couple hundred pages behind me the story picked up, and it was a pretty good page turner from that point on. So I have to give her credit for being a good storyteller. However, I thought the characters were uninteresting. Somehow I just never cared much about any of them. Jeb was probably the best characterized. Even Wanderer and Melanie were a little dull. I didn't find myself as "smitten" by Jared or Ian as I think was intended, though Ian was the better love interest character. And I was truly disappointed by the ending. We spend the last chunk of the book preparing ourselves for Wanderer's exit--I agreed with her moral stance that if it was wrong for the aliens to invade the human hosts, then she had to give up her life. It was the right thing to do. Then, in order to give us a "happy ending", she does an about-face and decides that as long as the host body's original occupant doesn't seem to be coming back, then it's okay to be a parasite. I saw that as a cop-out.

Anyway, it was fun to read, and not a terrible book by any means--I just had higher expectations from this author.