First Review: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Please please please keep in mind that this is my first review—ever, and there will may be a few mistakes; and I’d be very glad if you told me where/what to change.

Title: The 5th Wave

Author: Rick Yancey

Publisher: Penguin Books

ISBN: 978-0-141-34581-9

Pages: 460

Rating: 3.5 / 5

The 5th Wave is a dystopian/post-apocalyptic young adult novel that tells us about an alien invasion. We meet Cassie Sullivan, who is 16 years old and lives a normal life with her family and friends but her life loses its ordinariness when aliens attack and the first wave hits Earth.

The book was… interesting. I bought this book last year and I remember how happy I was after finding it because everybody told me that the book was amazing and I felt very excited to -finally- read it. Sadly, the book didn’t live up to my expectations.

This was my second attempt to read this book and I admit: It was very hard for me. Maybe because I was biased since I already knew that I wasn’t going to like it or maybe I got tired of reading dystopian books, I don’t know the main reason.

First we have Cassie: A teenage girl who finds herself all alone after she gets separated from her family and believes that she’ll be alive as long as she’s alone. Cassie has the know-it-all attitude towards the invasion and that starts being annoying after some point, you just want to knock some sense into her head but her plan backfires when she meets Evan Walker. Then we have Evan: The incredibly mysterious guy who miraculously saves Cassie and helps her stay alive but of course, that doesn’t change the fact that Evan keeps a lot of secrets. Fortunately, Cassie is not so gullible so she manages to realize that she should not fully trust Evan. And lastly: Ben Parrish, a boy from Cassie’s school and Sammy, Cassie’s brother who are kept in a military base and trained hard to protect the survivors, but soon it becomes evident that why they are kept there is an entirely different case.

Did the scenes felt real? Yes. Sometimes I had to put down the book to remind myself that that wasn’t real and I was safe in my room. It was probably one of the few things that made the book at least a little bit enjoyable; you could easily imagine that you were in the book.

Still, something was off. I didn’t feel connected to the book and I had to sit without doing anything after I finished the book to see what all the hype was about because almost all of my friends loved the book and said they couldn’t wait for the second book while I could hardly finish the first book.

Overall, it wasn’t an amazing book but it wasn’t horrible either. You can give it a try if you’re into post-apocalyptic books. However, I can’t guarantee that you’ll like it.

Where to buy: Book Depository // Amazon // Barnes&Noble