Helpful Score: 4
THE 5TH WAVE was the November 2013 pick in my neighborhood book club.
Oh boy, where shall I begin?
It starts off intriguing. Cassie made for an interesting teen with a sharp wit, and an even sharper capacity for survival after the first four waves of an alien invasion had wiped out most of humanity. Her little brother's been taken, and so her primary focus and motivation is to honor her promise that they would reunite.
But. Then Cassie meets Evan. And it's like the slow deflation of a hot air balloon ensues. It's all downhill from there. It's as if someone else took over writing the story from that point on! The Cassie character completely changes tone and substance.
The storyline becomes filled with the cheesiest of cheesy insta-love, with Cassie turning into a swooning, panting, angsty teenager. And the whole it's-an-apocalypse-so-we-could-be-killed-any-minute storyline loses all credibility.
Throw in a school yard crush Cassie had on one Ben Parrish, who just so happens to come back into her life in the most contrived way, and you've got a very trite, it's-been-done-WAY-better-before, and hollow end-of-the-world story.
There are also a plethora of cartoonish names in this book: Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. Dumbo. And let's not forget, Poundcake....Clearly this book is better left to the teens and adolescents it was written for. It just doesn't live up to the hype, and has zero originality.
For the strong opening, I'm torn between C-/D+. Otherwise, it was a D read for me.
Oh boy, where shall I begin?
It starts off intriguing. Cassie made for an interesting teen with a sharp wit, and an even sharper capacity for survival after the first four waves of an alien invasion had wiped out most of humanity. Her little brother's been taken, and so her primary focus and motivation is to honor her promise that they would reunite.
But. Then Cassie meets Evan. And it's like the slow deflation of a hot air balloon ensues. It's all downhill from there. It's as if someone else took over writing the story from that point on! The Cassie character completely changes tone and substance.
The storyline becomes filled with the cheesiest of cheesy insta-love, with Cassie turning into a swooning, panting, angsty teenager. And the whole it's-an-apocalypse-so-we-could-be-killed-any-minute storyline loses all credibility.
Throw in a school yard crush Cassie had on one Ben Parrish, who just so happens to come back into her life in the most contrived way, and you've got a very trite, it's-been-done-WAY-better-before, and hollow end-of-the-world story.
There are also a plethora of cartoonish names in this book: Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. Dumbo. And let's not forget, Poundcake....Clearly this book is better left to the teens and adolescents it was written for. It just doesn't live up to the hype, and has zero originality.
For the strong opening, I'm torn between C-/D+. Otherwise, it was a D read for me.
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