"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Review: The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

Wow.
      Wow.
            WOW.

 The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey is a WOW book. A not-to-be-missed book. A stay-up-late-and-read-book-because-you-have-to-know-what-happens-next book.

 I predict that The 5th Wave will be the next IT book with teens in the tradition of Hunger Games and Divergent.  I am not alone in my estimation because a lot of people who know more about books than me are saying similar things:
*"Yancey's heartfelt, violent, paranoid epic, filled with big heroics and bigger surprises, is part War of the Worlds, part Starship Troopers, part Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and part The Stand . . . a sure thing for reviewers and readers alike."—Booklist *starred review*
"Step aside, Katniss."—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“It has the dark, swoopy adrenaline of The Hunger Games, but the elegiac tone of The Road. Who cares what shelf you find it on? Just read it.”—EW.com
 "A modern sci-fi masterpiece . . . should do for aliens what Twilight did for vampires."—USAToday.com
After reading the first few chapters I called my family together and put together a plan in case of  an alien invasion here. (I am not kidding.) I lived the book during all my waking hours and I'm pretty sure that my dreams were tainted by aliens, too. To say that I was freaked out would be an understatement. I listened to the audiobook of The 5th Wave. The narrators, Brandon Espinoza and Phoebe Strohl, must have needed oxygen between their reading sessions. They read the book at such a breakneck speed, building the tension with every new chapter.

 Within months of the alien mothership arriving above our planet over 7 billion individuals are dead, yet no one has even seen a single alien. It's pretty hard to fight an enemy you can't see.
  • The 1st Wave: an electromagnetic pulse that rendered all machines inoperable.
  • The 2nd Wave: a tsunami that wiped out all coastal areas
  • The 3rd Wave: the red death, similar to Ebola, spread by birds.
  • The 4th Wave: humans implanted by aliens are shooting and killing other humans
  • The 5th Wave: you will have to read the book to find out.
We included The 5th Wave on our Mock Printz list of books. Even though the book is popular it is also well-crafted. Could it also be an award winner? We'll see in January.

 In the meantime, I challenge you to read The 5th Wave and let me know what you think.


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