The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey is the first installment in a young adult science fiction trilogy.

Pitch:  The 5th Wave follows 16-year-old Cassie Sullivan as she tries to survive in a world devastated by the waves of alien invasion that have already decimated the population and knocked humankind back to the Stone Age. As one of Earth’s last survivors, Cassie is left with just herself and has to learn the hard way to trust no-one. Throughout the plot, Sullivan must pass multiple obstacles to save her brother Sammy.

Review: The novel is not as predictable as I expected it to be. It’s ironic for me to say that because everything I predicted came to pass but a much larger scope of events happened that I hadn’t foresaw. There were a lot of unusual and refreshing aspects to the book. The different point of views made complete sense to me because it is also about a war and having different point of views of the same events was a smart risk to take. 

All of the characters gradually become interesting. Cassie is the gem, I like her humor, it was a bit refreshing in a way. She doesn’t try to hard or take herself too seriously. She’s terrified and alone thus talking to herself a lot but the internal monologues are never truly boring. When Bubby was first introduced it was sometimes hard for me to differentiate the two. They had the same irony in their humor but in the end Bubby had a voice of his own. When Cassie met Evan and got all self-conscious and worried about what he thought of her, she did start to slightly lose me. I thought the novel was turning all romance on me but – thank god – it was kept to a minimum.

Rick Yancey dealt well with the vulnerability that comes with trusting someone. The doubts and desire to connect with someone were on point. He succeeded in shaking my belief of what the 5th wave actually was, when I had already guessed it, but the book is unexpected in all the right places. The outcome might have been predictable but the roads that led us to it were thrilling and felt genuine.