Author: Rick Yancey

BOOK REVIEW – The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave #1) by Rick Yancey

BOOK REVIEW – The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave #1) by Rick YanceyThe 5th Wave (The 5th Wave #1)
by Rick Yancey
Purchase on: AmazoniBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.

Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother-or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

Pss! Pss! I have a theory.

Want to hear it? I’m starting to think that Rick Yancey is a genius. What does a genius do, you’re asking? He makes people think they are the genius, by creating a story so predictable that every reader will feel so fucking clever. No, no, this is not sarcasm (not entirely, anyway). See, I was here bitching about how I guessed everything – every fucking thing apart from the ear teddy bear rumpled (come on, I’m not that great) – when I realized that there was no way I wasn’t meant to. NO WAY. The clues are EVERYWHERE. All along. So what does it leave us? If the shock factor is close to none, what does it freaking leave us?

► That leaves us with characters that confused the hell out of me – not because of what they do (yet don’t think I forgot you, Evan. You became more interesting but you’re still a creeeeeeep) – but more because of my reactions to them. I can’t decide if I didn’t care about them or liked them or was annoyed by them. All of the above, probably. Except Nugget. I’ll always love you, Nugget. I’ll even forgive you for not really sounding like a 5 years old. I’m Team Nugget. Woot! Anyway – what was I saying – oh, yes, my complete inability to know what I thought of the characters when I was reading. Here’s my little opinion, in the end :

Cassie – Likeable and relatable. I don’t care about her flaws, her mistakes – I get her.
Zombie – This is true what they say about first impression. Don’t trust them (or is it the opposite? I can never remember) – The fact is, I lost my interest in its parts pretty fast. One word : bland. And riffles. Way too much riffles. Okay, okay, I’m not fair. I just don’t like him. He bores me. Booh. Also, View Spoiler »
Ringer – Who?
Evan – Awww, here’s our little creeper! Everybody waves to Evan! Helloooooo Evan!! No, but really guy. This is not okay to lurk. This is not okay to kiss someone who tells no (even if *because it’s a book* she changes her mind in a heartbeat. I HATE THAT SHIT. PLEASE DON’T). You sure don’t blow the candle and kiss her anyway. Who does that?! Oh, yes. A fucking psycho. Yes, even if you’re in looooooove. By the way, don’t act all righteous about it. It’s called instalove and that’s pretty common over there. *waves to Edward* I’ll give you this, though, your last parts were pretty great. You still stay an obsessive psycho to me. Here’s me slapping you behind the head *ow! That shit hurts!*

► What was my biggest problem? Well, that would be the boredom. Looking back, I think that Rick Yancey‘s writing didn’t do it for me. Oh, yeah, some parts were amazing and I have tons of quotes because the guy is pretty quotable. There’s that. Yet I can’t count how many times I felt bored to death only to end thinking after, hey, that was pretty cool. That’s why I think I liked more the idea of the book than the book itself. I love how the story makes us think about what it really means to be human. Is that what we do? Is that how we look? Would we be able to decipher whether we’re right or wrong? I don’t think so. That woke up my interest. Too bad it was drowned into my boredom. I should point, though, that some parts engrossed me – mostly Nugget’s POV, but also Cassie-pre Evan POV.

What a rambling girl I am. Sigh. I’ll organize my review better. I PROMISE. (well except if aliens come and all, in that case I don’t promise. Sometimes we just can’t, remember?)

Oh, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that I’m safe in France. I mean, who the hell cares about France? Aliens always go to the US anyway. Sorry guys. I loved talking with you all. *blows kiss*

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Star (The 5th Wave #3) by Rick Yancey

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Star (The 5th Wave #3) by Rick YanceyThe Last Star (The 5th Wave #3)
by Rick Yancey
Purchase on: AmazoniBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:

The enemy is Other. The enemy is us.

They’re down here, they’re up there, they’re nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us.

But beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves.

In these last days, Earth’s remaining survivors will need to decide what’s more important: saving themselves…or saving what makes us human.

Call me Zombie.
Everything hurts. Even blinking hurts. But I’m getting up. That’s what zombies do.
We rise.

Okay so…I’m not guna lie. I had a review that I LOVED written out, but my laptop is acting up again and it shut off before my USB saved it. I was going to recreate it, I was in the process of doing so, but it seems stupid. Those were REAL emotions and they flowed out of me so easily…but that’s what happens when you truly connect with a story. So, seeing as I loved this story, this series, these characters with all my heart, I made a connection so strong, so unyielding that I have a lot to say. Too much to say.

So there you go. You can love the good in us and hate the bad, but the bad is in us, too. Without it, we wouldn’t be us.

 photo tumblr_n1q7qgKjhr1r9h6gko1_500_zps3gu3uely.gif

So, instead of trying to recreate those raw emotions, this amazing idea I had explaining how beautiful bookends could be (you’d have totally dug it, guyz-as it is, this makes no sense. Had you read my profound thoughts in said erased review, you’d have been all…wow, that makes sense. Obvi), I’m going to go a different direction. Write a wholly different review with another set of raw emotions…because that just proves to you how much this book and series meant to me. A whole review of epic, wonderful, well-thought out things I bared from my soul are gone forever with no ounce of documentation…and I’m barely upset.

I’ll kill until I lose count. I’ll kill until counting doesn’t matter.

Sure, I’m angry, I loved what I did. But, as it is, I could never say everything I’m thinking in one review, so another take on my thoughts couldn’t hurt. It’s just not the same. Anyway. My feels know no bounds. Sorry I rambled. Sorry I’ve been thinking about this since I finished 24 hours ago. Sorry I have re read my quotes over and over and over and over again…and I still break down every time.

 photo tumblr_nzkty841Yq1u7gnm9o1_500_zpsa1psuxp7.gif

It’s more than Zombie can handle. He falls against the side of the barricade, gulping air, his face lifted up to the sky. Lost, found, dead, alive, the cycle repeats; there’s no escape, there’s no reprieve. Zombie closes his eyes and waits for his breath to slow, his heart to steady. A small break before it begins again: the next loss, the next death.

It’s not often I love a whole series from beginning to end. It’s a rarity. Authors start out these series with promising ideas, wonderful, charismatic characters, and the question of what’s to come for everything involved. We wait and we wait and we wait…Because no matter how much we beg and plead and cry for the next book, it’s all a fruitless endeavor, isn’t it? They do what they want anyway, right? Especially those last books…they love to pull those final book extensions because ‘You want it to be what it’s meant to be right? You don’t want it messed up. We’re doing this to give you the best story possible. Don’t you want the perfect end to your beloved series??? You wouldn’t want to ruin that, would you?’ So they tweak and they twist and they turn and they add and delete and edit edit edit and they don’t release it until they are damn well ready to.

She was the mayfly, here for a day, then gone. She was the last star, burning bright in a sea of limitless black.

So…we sit again. We wait. And then it appears on our e-readers or on our doorstep and we immediately download it at midnight and read and read and read and then it’s like…that’s it? This is the end we waited for? Not everyone gets as disappointed, haughty, or judgmental as I, though, apparently, because there have been, like, seven releases this year for finales and I’ve hated 6 out of the 7 while others loved them. It’s been rather…devastating.

I supposed I could turn to Bear. It was always easy to talk to him. We had hours of conversation, good conversation, during those weeks when it was just me and him hiding in the woods. Bear’s an excellent listener. He never yawns or interrupts or walks away. Never disagrees, never plays games, never lies. I go where you go, always, that’s Bear’s jam.
Bear proves that true love doesn’t have to be complicated-or even reciprocated.

So when I saw this was close to finally being released (DAMN YOU, YOU STUPID 8 (or however many) month set back!) I was blasé about it. What did I even have to look forward to, ya know??? I have hated almost every series end this year and have been living in heartbreak hotel all by my lonesome as each bbf’s story crumbled to ashes. And then this little morsel appeared on my iPad. My hopes were low, I didn’t set the bar too high….but anyone that knows me knows this was a defense mechanism. I have loved this series since it was first released years ago. I have followed Cassie on her journey from the very beginning as she chased after Sammy, held that damnable teddy bear, found a deep bond with an otherworldly sniper, and her teenage crush. She has been through the ringer (HA! That bitch….) and only wants to make a world where her little brother can live and see it as she has gotten to. See the universe’s beauty, the stars, the sky. Birds and rivers and schools and friendship and love. Not devastation, war, battling to wake up each day alive, fighting for each breath earned. Not needing to hold up a gun at every stranger lest they rip you to shreds or shoot your head off before you get a chance to. A world with trust. A world with unity. A world with peace and kindness….a world with hope. A world like before.

And I run on. Through a primordial landscape unscarred by any human thing, the world as it was before trust and cooperation unleashed the beast of progress. The world is circling back now to what it was before we knew it. Paradise lost. Paradise returned.

 photo Cassiopeia-A_zpsoiuqvuoq.jpg

This. Book. Was. Everything. It was rain clouds and sunshine and laughter and friendship and sacrifice and loyalty. It was every moment. It was every thought. It was your waking breath and your final memory before sleep. It was your dreams and your consciousness and it was….everything.

But the most wonderful thing of all, our highest achievement and the one thing for which I pray we will always be remembered, is stuffing wads of polyester into an anatomically incorrect, cartoonish ideal of one of nature’s most fearsome predators for no other reason than to soothe a child.

I was prepared for x. I was prepared for xx. I was even prepared for xxx….but what I didn’t expect, what I wasn’t ready for…I wasn’t prepared for this. How does an author…do this? I can’t explain it. In no way can it be described. It’s like…you know you’re hungry, but you aren’t sure what you feel like. So you kind of just…chill. Take it all in, decide to go for the ride and see what you feel like in a minute. And then all of a sudden someone hands you something or you see a meal come out in front of you and it just…clicks. That is what you want, and it is exactly what you needed-You just didn’t know it.

Reduce the human population to a sustainable number, then crush the humanity out of it, since trust and cooperation are the real threats to the delicate balance of nature, the unacceptable sins that drove the world to the edge of a cliff.

And that’s this story. This trilogy had integrity from the start. Whether you liked, hated, or loved, no one could say it lacked originality or that it didn’t pique your curiosity. I mean, everyone can agree on that, right? I’m real big on integrity, and I’ve been super upset this year that so many series have lost their…spark, their originality. They have lost the thing that makes them so special and what made them stand out among all the other series, in my mind. But this series…from book one on, I have been nothing but awed. Nothing but impressed. The second book got dark, therefore making me even more of a fan, even as some people dwindled off and lost their love for it. Hey, you can’t win with everyone.

Lying is like murder-after the first one, each one that follows is easier.

But then this was released….and I can’t even explain how perfectly perfect this was wrapped up. And here’s the most beautiful thing about it: It wasn’t wrapped up in a neat little bow. BOOM. I just…YES. Thank you!!! These dystopian authors think that their crumbling world has to be put back together in the end, that the world could so easily be re-made, rebooted, whatever. But no. Fuck that. Life is messy. The world is messy. We are messy. Humanity has been ripped from all these people and we expect it all to be fixed by a few action scenes? I don’t think so. And Yancey didn’t even try to pull that shit. Each scene was a building block and a new layer on an intricately pieced together puzzle, and until that final sentence, that final paragraph, that final moment…nothing fit. And that’s the most amazing, mesmerizing, breath-taking thing to me: It was perfectly imperfect….and therein lies the integrity. Loads and loads of integrity…and I am utterly speechless about it. (Well…)

Why must I always be the isle of crazy alone in an ocean of sensibility? The should to everybody else’s shouldn’t? The I-will to their better-nots?

I couldn’t breathe from beginning to end. My heart was beating faster and faster with each progressing page. My mind was racing at the speed of light, trying it’s fucking hardest to figure out what was going to happen, who would make it (would anyone make it?), how it would end, who was worth keeping and who was worth discarding. And…okay, I’ll fucking admit it, who the hell Cassie would be with, in the end. Sorry. Is what it is-but the best part??? THIS STORY. This story was larger than a girl and a boy and another boy and a slightly mean sniper girl-This series and this end made me proud of the dystopian genre, again. This is how you end a series. This is how it’s done.

Squad 53 is gone, broken apart, dead or missing or dying or running.
RIP, squad 53.

I don’t remember so much humor, this dark comic relief that Cassie Sullivan possessed, and Ben Parish’s humor and determination to keep things light in the face of certain death. And I know I shouldn’t say it, I know it sounds bleak, but I’d be shorting myself if I didn’t say it: This book has one of the most heartbreaking scenes I’ve ever read. And it’s not what you’d think…but it burns. It burns so good.

The others concluded that the only way to save the world was to annihilate civilization. Not from without, but from within. The only way to annihilate human civilization was to change human nature.

 photo 9925620_zpsadycwghp.gif

I find it important to note, also, that I literally snarled at my husband because of this book. That’s right. At precisely 12:41 AM on the 25th (or was it technically the 26th?) of May, my hubbs woke up and proceeded to try and be suave and play nice and flirt with me once he saw I was awake and I literally, and I do mean LITERALLY, looked over and bared my teeth at him with a very viscous, aggressive, and otherwise very unattractive snarl-scraggly as I was, this did not help. You know, that tangled hair and tears streaming down my face while battling my choking sobs. I might have even been giving a very valiant effort at pulling my hair out. Silly boy, don’t you know not to interrupt the reader while she’s fully submerged in another reality??

They wanted a mindless, stone-cold killer to let loose on the world. They wanted a zombie. Now they’ve got one.

All the feels. All the stars. I was crushed in a way I wasn’t prepared for. And it’s my own fault, really. Because seriously…I was too busy judging my love for all the characters and my emotional investment in them:

Cassie-Can’t remember how I felt before, but OBSESSED with her now
Evan-Still like but…just not like I used to
Ben Parish-AGHHHHHH more than I even remember possible!! I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER, my Zombie!! Protect me! lol
Ringer-Begrudgingly like, how I’ve pretty much always felt
Nugget-Oh, Nugget, must you hurt your sister’s feelings, so?? But anyway, love his POV now, whereas I never did before

Anyway…my point. How could I forget? Humanity comes first, in the end. I HATE YOU, YOU STUPID BOOK. I lie. I love you so much. Come…come join your friends on the bookshelf…

More quotes I didn’t get to put in (if you wana read them :P):

I stood up. Then I sat back down. There was nowhere to go. Well, I could go to the kitchen and make a sandwich, except there was no bread or deli meat or cheese. I don’t know the particulars, but I’m pretty sure there’s a Subway on every corner in heaven. Also Godiva stores. On our second day here, I found Grace’s stash of forty-six boxes of Godiva chocolates. Not that I counted them.

After Sam hit me on the nose, I burst out of the bathroom, soaking wet, whereupon I smacked into Ben Parish’s chest. Ben was lurking in the hallway as if every little thing that has to do with Sam is his responsibility, the aforesaid little shit screaming obscenities at my back, the only dry part of my body after trying to wash his, and Ben Parish, the living reminder of my father’s favorite saying that it’s better to be lucky than smart, gave me that ridiculous what’s up? look, so stupidly cute that I was tempted to break his nose, thereby making him not so damn Ben Parish-y looking.

Stopping just short of the doorway, I pull out one of the stun grenades. I slip my finger into the pin. My hands are shaking. A dribble of sweat courses down the middle of my back. This is how they get you, this is how they crush the spirit right out of you. Out of the blue the past is rammed down your throat, a gut punch of memories of all the things you took for granted, the things that you lost in the blink of an eye, the stupid, trivial, forgettable things you didn’t know could crush you, things like an old woman’s quivery voice, high-pitched and far away, calling you inside for a plate of warm cookies and a glass of ice-cold milk.

*****************

 photo crying-celebrity-gifs-jennifer-lawrence_zps8iamsc94.gif

Wow. I’m…actually speechless. My heart…is that my heart ripped to shreds on the floor?

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to process [all the epic].

I am a walking, talking ZOMBIE and I definitely didn’t sleep last night.

Zombie.

Finally. Finally an author who ends a trilogy the way it should be….and I was highly critical-you bet your ass on that. No free 5 star hand out here. Just….I am without words. Can’t complete full sentences. I am without emotion. Comatose.

Yeah. Just call me Zombie.

View all my reviews

BOOK REVIEW – The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1) by Rick Yancey

BOOK REVIEW – The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1) by Rick YanceyThe Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1)
by Rick Yancey
Purchase on: AmazoniBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:

These are the secrets I have kept. This is the trust I never betrayed. But he is dead now and has been for more than forty years, the one who gave me his trust, the one for whom I kept these secrets. The one who saved me . . . and the one who cursed me.

So starts the diary of Will Henry, orphaned assistant to Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, a man with a most unusual specialty: monstrumology, the study of monsters. In his time with the doctor, Will has met many a mysterious late-night visitor, and seen things he never imagined were real. But when a grave robber comes calling in the middle of the night with a gruesome find, he brings with him their most deadly case yet.

A gothic tour de force that explores the darkest heart of man and monster and asks the question: When does man become the very thing he hunts?

If this book was a landscape, it would be the Sahara desert : perhaps beautiful from a distance, but so fucking dry that I wouldn’t want to stay there more than 1 hour. I stopped at 67%, because there’s just so much boredom I can take.

Lack of … interest. What’s the point of this? Oh, here’s a monster. Look, his teeth are in his belly. This is a *insert Latin name to appear clever*. How wonderful. Now, you can eat your porridge, but just so you know, these creatures are invading New Jerusalem. What do you mean you don’t care? SNAP TO, READER! SNAP TO!

I’m sorry but I can’t.

Nothing fucking happens! I don’t care if it’s gross, I mean, I do have an history of disgust with maggots but in all honesty that’s not at all what bothered me here. No. What annoyed the crap out of me is the fact that the plot felt way too simple to interest me, the whole thing punctuated with so many useless and slooooooow scenes that I struggled to keep my eyes open.

Not to mention that far from awakening my interest, the Latin names and other classics references felt somewhat pretentious to me, because they seemed completely out of phase with the simple plot.

Lack of … depth in the characterization. Look, I love darkness. I love morally ambiguous characters. You know I do. Yet if I do like wondering what characters really think and analyzing their actions, in my opinion I haven’t near enough material here to work with : everyone keeps telling me that Warthorpe is complex and multi-layered, but HUH? Really, HUH? To me he’s one dimensional and pretty boring, and don’t get me started about the stiff and repetitive dialogues which consistently failed to convince me.

Moreover, young Will Henry lacked a voice in my opinion. I know what you’re thinking, “what’s her problem? It’s Will’s POV!” except, yes it is but no it’s not. The narrator isn’t 12 years-old Will Henry, but the events are told years after they originally took place. As it is, I know how old Will Henry interprets them, and if his thoughts aren’t (always) uninteresting, by no means do I have any insight about what he was thinking when he was younger. Come on. No 12 years-old would express an opinion in such a way. None.

To me, Warthorpe is pretty dry in his selfish manners and Will Henry acts like a spineless puppy. Please don’t hate me, but I really didn’t see anything else so far.

Lack of … emotions. I don’t mind the lack of romance, and several of my favorite books don’t contain one bit of it. This being said, I need to feel at least ONE emotion – I know, I’m annoying.

What brings me to… the absence of fear. Scary, The Monstrumologist? Monsters don’t scare me. Humans scare me on a daily basis – when I watch the news, when I read, when I talk to random people. Stupidity scares me to death. Clowns do scare me, but only because Stephen King screwed up my childhood. Monsters? Nope. Grossed-out? Maybe, but never scared. This book should have made my heart pound – sadly, it never did.

Anyway – blablabla, I didn’t get it, blablabla, I don’t care is all. So, okay, It’s well-written. Okay. GOOD. Sadly I don’t give a damn if I’m bored to death (it did escape the 1-star rating thanks to it, though).

*shrug*

I’m in the minority though, so don’t let my review prevent you from reading it^^

BOOK REVIEW – The Infinite Sea (The 5th Wave #2) by Rick Yancey

BOOK REVIEW – The Infinite Sea (The 5th Wave #2) by Rick YanceyThe Infinite Sea (The 5th Wave #2)
by Rick Yancey
Purchase on: AmazoniBooks
Add to: Goodreads

 You say you know how we think? Then you know what I’m going to do. I’ll rip your face off with a pair of tweezers. I’ll tear your heart out with a sewing needle. I’ll bleed you out with seven billion tiny cuts, one for each one of us.
That’s the cost. That’s the price. Get ready, because when you crush the humanity out of humans, you’re left with humans with no humanity.
In other words, you get what you pay for, motherfucker.

Pulse-pounding, heart-throbbing, intense, brutal perfection. Not a moment passed where I wasn’t 100% enthralled in this crazy world where literally no one is immune to death and there is no sanctuary. I must admit that I was terrified I wouldn’t love this book. I read the first book, what, like over a year ago? I was obsessed with it. Consumed by it. But then a year passed and, like with all great book series and movies, I couldn’t see myself falling for the characters so easily again. It’s so hard to do, anymore. But then, this book. This goddamn book. From page one, I was swept into the spellbinding pages of death and destruction, of utter hopelessness and despair. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no matter how it ended this time I would not doubt Rick Yancey’s otherworldly ability to capture my soul for the next novel.

The Others understood that, understood it better than most of us. No hope without faith, no faith without hope, no love without trust, no trust without love. Remove one and the entire human house of cards collapses.

This book….was beyond words. I see that some people were disappointed with the length of the novel…why? It was absolutely fantastic in the number of pages given, can’t we just enjoy what we have while we have it? Don’t we want to make this world prosper and last? We don’t want it to perish even faster, do we? Well, I don’t. I don’t want everyone to die all at once because the story is pro-longed, I want to see his masochistic brain work to it’s full potential and to spread it into as many books as he damn well pleases. I just don’t know what everyone wanted-if he kept going, he’d surely have had to confirm or deny some deaths and probably even slash some more….nah. He’s waiting. He’s biding his time-he’ll wait to kill them all. I don’t know who is going to make it (I have my suspicions) or who will die a horrible death (Again, damn those suspicions), but I know this author is biding his time. He’s toying with our emotions…and I love it.

Onto his stomach. Then knees. Then hands. His elbows quivered, his wrists threatened to buckle under his own weight. Self-centered, stubborn, sentimental, childish, vain. I am humanity. Cynical, naive, kind, cruel, soft as down, hard as tungsten steel.
I am humanity
He crawled.
I am humanity.
He fell.
I am humanity.
He got up.

Did I mention….that the peril in this book was astounding? I read a lot of books with a lot of peril, but this is the harshest, cruelest world I’ve read about in a while. It tore my soul to pieces and sucked the life right out of me. It’s not so much all that happens, it’s more how the characters react, handle, endure every situation. Their reactions have the ability to make you care or not care, feel or just sit motionless….I guess it all depends on how much you love these characters and how attached to them you are. For me, that tiny seed of hope for each individual character was planted in book one, and now I would be devastated to lose any of them (okay, okay, aside from a couple).

Virtues are vices now, and death is the cost of love. Not the death of his body. His body was the lie. True death. The death of his humanity. The death of his soul.

I don’t want to give a single thing away, so I’ve been studiously avoiding the plot. I think I’ll just focus on the relationships. The relationships formed and severed in TIS were what tied me, even more than the perilistic plot, surprisingly, to this story. Friendships are formed, old enemies are forced to work in close quarters, and loyalty is tested in the truest sense of the word. Everyone had me guessing their loyalty, aside from the main characters that I know really well, from the very beginning. I’m ashamed to say, also, that I made an incorrect assumption about a certain person that I have never been able to pin down on morality…my face burned with shame at a certain point in the story. The bravery brought forth by these wonderful characters in a world where nothing you hold dear is without it’s consequences was astounding to me. They all had such strength in spirit, and that fueled them when all was lost….but even the strongest of mind can break.

The uncertainty of my own experience is crushing. I am drowning in an infinite sea. Sinking slowly, the weight of the lightless depths forcing me down, forcing the air from my lungs, squeezing the blood from my heart.

Promises. This story was fueled by promises-made and kept, lost and found. The idea that a promise, in a world like this, is all that keeps humanity intact-the last shred of humanity that alters the line between being a ruthless, cold-blooded killer from a person doing what it takes to survive, to live-on, to keep your goddamn promises. Rick promised me brutality and angst-he promised no mercy and little hope….and that’s a promise he kept to me, as a reader. No nose went uncrunched if the situation permitted, bone was shown, blasted, obliterated…oh yes, he delivered. The brutality in this story made me giddy with delight, and I can’t wait to see who what else he blasts into oblivion in book three.

When the game is fixed, how do you avoid losing?

So, again, here I am waiting, without answers, without an idea of who will end up with whom (I suck at the who/whom thing-spare me), who will live, who is still living, if certain people will be okay…and it kills me. It kills me I have to wait another year, maybe more. It’s brutal. Unfair. Cruel. But, being the masochist I am, I don’t care. Because, in the end, I enjoyed the ride while it lasted. And now, when book three comes out, I know I won’t have anything to worry about. It’s calming despite the inner turmoil boiling inside me. On the inside I’m a tsunami just circling the island, about to unleash my fury on those who stand in my wake. But on the outside…on the outside I’m a serene lake, hiding all my emotions deeply underneath the surface. Because from what I’ve seen of the last two stellar books, there’s an infinite sea (nudge nudge) of possibilities.


People die. Love endures.

One last thing-Mr. Yancey?? Can (view spoiler) live??? Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease…..

 

BOOK REVIEW – The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave #1) by Rick Yancey

BOOK REVIEW – The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave #1) by Rick YanceyThe 5th Wave (The 5th Wave #1)
by Rick Yancey
Purchase on: AmazoniBooks
Add to: Goodreads

Does humanity fade when the will to survive kicks in?

This was an underlying tone to literally every scene that happens in this story. The human race is dwindling and only the strong survive. Who is human? Who is a human in disguise? And finally, who has turned against their own kind or gone rogue? There are so many rules one must abide by if they wish to live, and so many rules that must be broken. How can someone truly survive alone, both mentally and physically, without going crazy?

Cassie is on the run and on her own. She knows she must trust no one and not think twice about what must be done to survive and save her brother. In the beginning we see mostly flashbacks of her former life where her family was still alive.

This wasn’t my favorite part of the book-I’m not one to like past tense situations in a book if they aren’t essential, so, for me, this book was slow during those parts. I did like seeing why she “loved Ben Parish”-the flashbacks were funny and totally relatable. Everyone has a high school crush, and I think these tidbits made the story somewhat lighthearted.

When it does finally become wholly present, we start seeing a constant switch of POVs with each new part. At first I found it a little confusing, but when the story started growing more intense I started to look forward to seeing from even the soldier’s POV as well as Cassie’s. You could see how these two people were living at the same time and how different their situations were-how quickly they were figuring things out, how close they were getting to coming to the same conclusion, and ultimately, if they would ever cross paths. It started becoming essential that I get to the next page, the next chapter-I couldn’t get through the pages fast enough! I don’t know what part because there were just so many, but after we got through the introductions to each person in each part, the story started to go by so fast with so much happening that the thought of putting the book down became unbearable.

The only thing, aside from a few lagging areas, I didn’t like was Sammy’s POV. I didn’t really care to delve into his story too far, and I think that many chapters for him was too much. He talked like everyone else but he was only 5? This was really the biggest problem for me.

So overall, this was a very intriguing read and different from anything else I have read lately. It was creepy, intense, and heartbreaking. He did manage to throw some hope and desperation in there, but more often than not, we felt like nothing could ever get better, and what were they going to do when(if) they got what they wanted anyway? I liked all the main characters and never really knew who to root for. I have so many thoughts and so many overwhelming emotions that I couldn’t possibly get them all into this review. I hate that I want the second book right now, because lord only knows when THAT is coming out. So to sum up-an intense but good story, characters that you want to hear more about, and a plot that thickens with each coming chapter. While not for everyone, anyone who wants a new story with a twist, this is the book for them.

Oh, and Cassie? Grow your hair out…for EVERYONE’s sake lol.

© 2024

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑