oneandonlywm3

Mixed thoughts about this one. I didn't like it as much as I wanted to, but for a YA novel, this was sort of good to be honest.

So The 5th Wave was basically about an alien invasion wherein the "aliens" try to eradicate the human race. The big question is, why? And also, how?

This novel was written with a dual point-of-view. Very common in YA novels, and most actually succeed by doing this. I could consider this as one of those successful ones, but only because I liked one of the two. Let me talk about the one I didn't like first.

Cassie's point-of-view
This should've been the favorable one, but 100% not for me. At first though, I did like her pov(point of view) very much because it talked about how she wanted, and was surviving the invasion. But as the novel progressed, all I read was romance. I know romance is very essential to any kind of novel, but too much is never good.

The part about Evan Walker was very disappointingly predictable. She clearly violated her number one rule, don't trust anyone. In fact, she violated it very quickly. She just trusted him for no reason at all. That seems to be rather contradicting.

I know that the romance was just added for the sake of it, and I was clearly supposed to be engrossed with her survival story, but the opposite thing happened. I read more of her wanting to like Evan, to hating Evan, more than her actual surviving. That was a huge letdown for me.

Zombie's point-of-view
Now this is how a Post Apocalyptic novel should be written. His story was clearly better than Cassie's, for the sole reason that his story talked about the novel, as Cassie's should have had. Honestly his pov reminded me of Ender's Game. A crew in training, with a "weak" leader, and their need to climb their way up to the top of the scoreboard. His parts were very climactic, and it obviously contributed most to the plot and its development.

So he became the sort of guardian of Nugget, or Sammy (Cassie's brother). And it's amazing how he gave everything he could to save this kid's life. He wasn't even related to him. Another reminder of Ender's Game for me, in a way.

Characters(Cassie) aside, another huge problem encircles this novel. Its predictability. All of the twists were very predictable for me. In fact, I was just waiting for them to finally come up. But like I said, I did expect this from a YA novel, so expectations were lowered to the extreme level.

Evan Walker being the silencer would be the biggest joke of a plot twist ever. First things first, he showed up, taking care of Cassie out of nowhere, and all of a sudden he told her that he loves her. With no clear explanation why he was helping her. And Cassie, alongside violating her first rule, gave her complete trust and didn't doubt him, until it was too late. He ended up not being the bad guy though, but his feeling for Cassie was still a huge question. It made him look like a psycho.

The recruiting of the kids, and ended up being a huge betrayal was also very predictable. Maybe its just because I've read many YA novels, and Sci-Fi novels, thus the predictability was very apparent to me.

Another huge disappointment would be the lack of development of the main premise of the story, aliens. That was one of the few reasons why I ended up reading this novel in the first place. Hopefully we'd see more Sci-Fi in the next novel, as this was the first novel, clearly for world building and character development.

The very good thing about this novel though was that it answered all of the questions it needed to, despite it being a series (I think). I know most YA novels end up answering all the questions in the second or third novel, and it shouldn't be like that. Each book needs closure, and this proved to be a good first novel.

So after all those complaints, one may ask why I rated this 4 stars, and the reason's that I liked Zombie's story. His training and survival made this novel quite enjoyable. Cassie might've been a let down, but maybe she could redeem herself in the next novel. Not sure what the next novel would be about, because this ended up not being a cliffhanger. After a huge lowering of expectations, the result was a 4 star rating. Not the best YA novel I've read, but it wasn't as bad as the others. This had more depth in the plot, alongside the cheesy overused romance. I'd recommend this to avid YA readers, as they'd like this more than I did. For those who aren't immune to the YA genre, better lower your expectations like I did, or you're in for a mediocre ride.