The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey | Audiobook Review

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MY THOUGHTS

Don’t want to read the whole review?  Click to jump to the Review At a Glance.

Ok, I admit it, I have never heard of The Fifth Wave until I saw the trailer a couple of months ago.  If you know me, you would know that I am so into aliens.  In fact, one of my favorite shows is Ancient Aliens, but I digress.  Let’s just say that I am very fascinated by aliens.

What is it about?

The Fifth Wave is about an alien attack on Earth.  The attacks come in waves; the first wave: total blackout; the second wave, natural disasters (earthquake); the third wave: pestilence (disease); and the fourth wave: trust no one.  We meet our heroine, Cassie Sullivan after the fourth wave, by herself.  This is told in the first person POV by primarily 3 main characters: Cassie, Ben, and Evan (Sammy, Cassie’s little brother also has a short POV).

Let’s talk about the plot

I love how the plot focuses more on our humanity.  What happens to us, humans when everyone we love is gone and you can’t trust anyone?  What happens when there is chaos and war?  This book made me think about a real dystopia.  What would happen to us if a plague of that magnitude would happen? Or even if there would be widespread natural disasters happening all over the globe at the same time?

The first part of the book focuses more on info dump.  This is told in a very non-boring way since it is told through Cassie’s flashback.  This part basically outlines what has happened to the world up to this point, tells us who in Cassie’s family has died and how they died, and what happened when The Others (aliens) first showed up.  I usually hate info dumps, but in this case, it was well done where I didn’t even recognize that I was getting info dumped!

Survival of the fittest!

The other parts of the story focus more on survival with Cassie’s quest on finding her little brother (the trailer for the movie captures this very well).

The Fifth Wave is fast-paced, full of action, and overall entertaining.  It also kept me guessing.  [spoiler]Well, not really because I knew who Evan Walker was![/spoiler]  Which wasn’t a surprise to me.  I mean, creepy much!

Romance showmance

The romance in this book is very subtle, which is refreshing in a YA novel.  There is also no love triangle here!  Yaaaaazzzz!  The pairing, in the end, was immensely satisfying.  But a little part of me still thought she was going to end up with [spoiler]Ben![/spoiler]  As I’ve stated above, the focus was more on survival.

What about the Audiobook?

Another amazing thing that audiobook companies/publishing houses (?) do is that they allow for multiple narrators for books with multiple POVs.  I can’t thank them enough for this because listening to different voices while they narrate (and sometimes inner monolog) their story adds to the overall enjoyment of the story.  In this case, both narrators were perfect.

Recommendations

The 5th Wave is a must read, definitely, before the movie comes out.  It had me at the edge of my seat (while driving, naturally) and kept me wanting more!  I am now queued up for The Infinite Sea, the second book in the trilogy and I am looking forward to it. Edit: While writing this review, I just found out that I already have the audiobook ready for me! Yips!

While you’re in an apocalypse type mood, read Reboot by Amy Tintera, Legend by Marie Lu.

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