The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave, #1) in Book BFFs

Apr 05, 2013 Vy rated it it was amazing

ALL THE STARS.

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May 31, 2013 Annette rated it it was amazing

Shelves: loved-this

There comes a time when a book piles up so many positive reviews from people whose opinions you trust, that, well, you just have to read it for yourself. In my case this was one of those books.

And my verdict? It's a five star read!

Rick Yancey may be a man, but he's a man who knows how to write compelling and complex characters. Characters who make you feel something, everything. When we first meet Cassie (the only female p.o.v. character) she's getting trigger happy in a convenience store and wh There comes a time when a book piles up so many positive reviews from people whose opinions you trust, that, well, you just have to read it for yourself. In my case this was one of those books.

And my verdict? It's a five star read!

Rick Yancey may be a man, but he's a man who knows how to write compelling and complex characters. Characters who make you feel something, everything. When we first meet Cassie (the only female p.o.v. character) she's getting trigger happy in a convenience store and while that might not be the most relatable situation, it certainly gets your attention, and then you hear her reasons. You start to see how she survives in this brave new world, how she's lasted so long. And you think "I could be Cassie." And that's pretty darn scary.

Beyond the great characters this book also offers bucket loads of suspense - alien mother ships, snippers, stalkers, creepy military operations, you name it. This is the sort of apocalypse where it's a matter of when you die, not if, and any time gained in the world of the living is a lucky surprise - I now understand the Hunger Games references (I was sort of mystified by them going in). In the words of one of the characters (slightly edited because I lost the page reference): "the only way to go forward [remain brave] isn't to find something to live for, it's to find something worth dying for..."

Now I'm a sucker for a romance plot line and at the start of this novel, after meeting Cassie and then finding out Ben, her high school crush, lived despite her assumptions he's dead, I thought I knew what was coming next. I had no clue. Another reason why this book rocks so much. Now I don't want to give any more spoilers but I will say that her love interest in this book had me in undecided territory right up until the final pages when he totally won me over and I want to see a whole load of p.o.v from him in book two!

Now for the ending: cliff hangers suck, but since I'm fairly sure that the character everyone's worried about is too major to be written out, I'm just going to chill, basking in the knowledge that come 2014 I'll probably see him again. And let me tell you, that's one title I'm putting on pre-order.

What I liked best: the ensemble cast, the alien/mystery/suspense elements, the romance, the p.o.v. characters' pithy/humorous observations, that damn teddy bear.

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Jun 07, 2013 TheBookAddictedGirl rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourite-series, paranormal, mystery, for-review, in-my-mailbox, favourites-shelf, fantasy, action-adventure, amazing-worlds, ya-adult-crossover

It’s taken me forever to get this review done, in no small part because I loved The 5th Wave so much I couldn’t find the words… Also, once I found them, there were just too many words! I rambled – a lot. I’ve done my best to cut back… I don’t think I was overly successful… Enjoy the gushing!
"1st Wave: lights out. 2nd Wave: surf's up. 3rd Wave: pestilence. 4th Wave: Silencer. What's next, Evan? What is the 5th Wave?"
The 1st Wave killed all electrical items – everything run by a battery or electri It’s taken me forever to get this review done, in no small part because I loved The 5th Wave so much I couldn’t find the words… Also, once I found them, there were just too many words! I rambled – a lot. I’ve done my best to cut back… I don’t think I was overly successful… Enjoy the gushing!
"1st Wave: lights out. 2nd Wave: surf's up. 3rd Wave: pestilence. 4th Wave: Silencer. What's next, Evan? What is the 5th Wave?"
The 1st Wave killed all electrical items – everything run by a battery or electricity or an engine. Everything.
The 2nd Wave created huge tsunamis that destroyed all cities near the sea. Goodbye London, New York, Sydney...
The 3rd Wave created the Red Death, the Blood Plague, the Fourth Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It killed almost four billion people...
The Fourth Wave created the Silencers – things that look like humans, act like humans, until you get too close. Then, they kill you. The 4th Wave isolated the survivors – made sure they couldn't trust anyone.
The 5th Wave? Well, no one knows. It hasn't happened yet. But it will. The Others want the humans dead. They want Earth. And they won't stop until they get it...
Cassie is a survivor. She is alone, on the run, trying to avoid Drones and Silencers. To do that, she needs to be alone. The only way to stay alive is to stay alone.
But then she meets Evan Walker. And he might be her only way of staying alive and finding the one thing she needs more than anything...
Meanwhile, a resistance is assembling. But are their aims true – and if they are, how can they alone possibly defeat the Others – the ones who killed seven billion in the blink of an eye...?
The 5th Wave’s prologue drew me in completely and I just was hooked from the word go! Right from the start, I loved it and knew that it would be my favourite alien-dystopian-sci-fi this year - maybe even ever! I mean, I'm a huge alien-apocalypse fan. Heck, I was watching Prometheus and Independence Day earlier this week, the latter while reading this book. And while Independence Day is a truly brilliant film, all I kept thinking was: ‘Bleh. Shut up, silly movie aliens, and let me go back to The 5th Wave.’ And that right there is how I know The 5th Wave should be seen as the best freaking alien dystopia out there right now.
But now onto one of my favourite bits of the book (other than the alien stuff). And that was Cassie. She was brilliant – hard and vulnerable, kickass and broken. And so so funny! She was such an awesome character!
And Evan... oh, I just instantly fell for him! He was just so... yum. So perfect. And I swear, it's just impossible not to love him. Evan Walker has now been added to my list of book boyfriends... But am I the only one who suspected, like right from the beginning…?
Other characters: loved Zombie. Loved Sammy. Loved… in fact, all the characters were brilliant, be they human or alien. They all felt very real, be they human, Other, or something… else... They had the best and worst traits of humanity, both the strengths and weaknesses.
And the romance was brilliant. Not too fast, not too slow. Not too much, not too little. Just perfection – making me one very happy little blogger!
I also loved the writing - Cassie's voice in particular. She sounded completely real and like any other teen girl - horrible world and all aside. But I just loved her sense of humour - it was kinda twisted and dark and wry, but it often made me smile. I love a girl who can joke in the face of death.
I also loved the split perspectives in this book. It did confuse me to begin with but I soon fell even harder in love. I love split POVs – they are my favourite style of writing. And we had so, so many scrummy perspectives to gobble up, ranging from Cassie and Evan, little Sammy and even a Silencer. Each of the chapters had a kind of distinct feel to them: amazing!
And, oh, how completely hooking the plot was! It was a mile a minute. Just non-stop action, suspense and twists. I loved zooming through it all!
I also really liked that despite the sci-fi setting there were still so many real issues involved - humanity, what's important, trust, love, family, strength. And the world was really amazing! It was like I was right there with Cassie – so terrifying! And I loved his take on the alien genre - these were clever aliens, not the stupid kind that launch a human war. As Stephen Hawking said...
“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans."
Oh, and I loved that Yancey's main character was a girl. I hate it when authors feel they need to stick to their own gender – this is an all-audiences book. It has something for everyone and is so un-stereotypical and fresh it's untrue. Yay to Yancey for ignoring stupid gender norms!
The 5th Wave is insanely fun and addictive and exciting and I loved it to pieces. And I must say, there was something truly masterful about the way Yancey linked all the stories together, making me doubt everything I thought I knew about a million times over and surprising me even more often. It was so much fun and was such an easy and quick read – one you're going to want to read in a single sitting, food, work and sleep be damned, so be prepared to take a large chunk from your day to devour this book!
Oh, and be prepared for the insane desperation for book two, the very second you put thus one down. It's all consuming, maddening, and yet The 5th Wave is so worth it.
Still. Don't say I didn't warn you... ...more

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Jul 07, 2013 Andi (Andi's ABCs) rated it liked it

Shelves: series

The review was originally posted on Andi's ABCs

Flat out, I was disappointed when I finished this one. I don’t know what I expected, but after all the love and the hype I just wanted something more and I just didn’t find it. Was it different than what I normally read? Absolutely. Did it keep me interested enough? Yup. But something wasn’t there for me and that left me feeling meh. There was a lot going on and a lot of characters and the whole thing was written in 3rd person even with the switch o The review was originally posted on Andi's ABCs

Flat out, I was disappointed when I finished this one. I don’t know what I expected, but after all the love and the hype I just wanted something more and I just didn’t find it. Was it different than what I normally read? Absolutely. Did it keep me interested enough? Yup. But something wasn’t there for me and that left me feeling meh. There was a lot going on and a lot of characters and the whole thing was written in 3rd person even with the switch of characters and that made it kind of hard to know who’s voice you were in. I think I really just expected more.

The book is about, well more like, starts with, Cassie. She is 17 year old girl that has had her family ripped apart by the alien invasion that occurred. Now alone she is trying to get to her brother that was taken to safety before the possible 5th wave happens. But on her journey she meets Evan. Now the question remains whether she should trust him or do as she has been doing for months and relying only on herself.

Okay so that isn’t the best description of the book, but it was really the best I could do. Like I said earlier there was A LOT going on in this book and Cassie seems to be the link to all of it in some way. Which actually was the only thing that I was able to grasp for the most part. Although I liked the writing, I had a problem with the style. Because there were so many characters and the whole book was written in 3rd person, I had trouble keep everything in order. When the audience was switched from Cassie to Zombie, it was heard to know whose scene/head I was supposed to be in because the voice didn’t change. That was my biggest grip next to the fact that there seemed to be 4 main characters and about 4 different stories happening. But on the plus I liked the characters a lot.

Cassie was strong but still vulnerable. She lost her whole family and didn’t know who to trust or what to do. Her character made sense and wasn’t the annoying, whiny girl she could have been. Evan was mysterious and sweet and left you guessing what his real story was. I wanted to trust him, but like Cassie I wasn’t sure I was supposed to. And then there was Zombie, a different man than when the book started. I figured out what his deal was in the beginning but I enjoyed how it was revealed and why he took on the identity that he did. I enjoyed parts of his story the most after all the Evan and Cassie stuff that I loved. And finally there was Cassie’s brother. He was kind of at the center of everything. Cassie may have brought all the stories together but Sam is how all the characters got together. That worked for me. I just think the lead up to get to that point was what muddled the story up. Or to be honest the hype that surrounded it.

In conclusion, I liked The 5th Wave. I really did. There were definitely parts I wasn’t crazy about and stuff that I was left scratching my head over as I tried to figure out what was actually going on, but I did like it. Did I love it like I was hoping, like a million others did? Not really. I’m not sure why, but it wasn’t what I thought I was going to get and that’s okay. I will still continue the series and I will still tell people to check out The 5th Wave if they want something with aliens that isn’t all that farfetched. But definitely not my favorite read of the year.

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May 29, 2013 Christopher rated it really liked it

Lived up to all the hype in my opinion...stellar story set up and character development..my only question is if it is a stand alone ( as it should be) or a series ( which it could be)

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Jun 04, 2013 Lis (The Reader L) rated it liked it · review of another edition

3 stars to the audiobook.... I can't help it. There were almost 6 hours of nothing!
I ended up so bored! The final was the best part....
I will read the book, maybe I my problem was the "audio" part. ...more

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Jul 11, 2013 April rated it it was amazing

WOW. JUST WOW. I didn't expect that I would love this book like Legend-love and Divergent-love kind of way. But it happened and now I have a new favorite dystopian book to add to my shelf. This book rocks in so many places and is so many ways. It was a fantastic read. Intense and breathtaking. I still couldn't recover. This book is a genius. I loved it.
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