Tuesday 6 August 2013

Book Club July 2013

Hey everyone!

A fab cover for a great book
A long time ago, in a coffee shop far, far away, several members of the YA reading group gathered to discuss The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey.

This book certainly deserves the 5 stars that we awarded it, and, in my opinion, it deserves enough stars to make up the Cassiopeia constellation itself. It was a fantastically terrifying read that had us teetering precariously on the edge of our seats whilst simultaneously feeling the need to chuck the book in the freezer and run a mile.
The 5th Wave follows Cassie Sullivan, a teenage girl alone in a desolate world and on the run from Them. The ones who razed the cities to the ground, stripped Earth of its inhabitants and killed its humanity. Survival is of the essence, and when the choice is between giving up and getting up, Cassie Sullivan gets up.

Some of the things that we loved about this book were the intricacy (and complete awesomeness) of the plot and the depth shown by the characters. Upon first reading the blurb, I thought that The 5th Wave was going to be a girl-meets-boy-they-beat-the-aliens-big-whoop-of-celebration kind of book, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

 Cassie feels like an actual person instead of a cardboard cut- out masquerading as one. Her reactions and views are reasonable in relation to the world that she’s in and she behaves, dare I say it, normally. No brattish cries of, “I’m destined to save the world!” or anything like that. One of my favourite moments in the book is about 150 pages in, purely because of Cassie’s reaction to her situation. *Grins * The other characters in the book were also as developed and well-rounded as Cassie, each one loveable despite their flaws.

I can’t go into detail about why The 5th Wave has such an amazing plot because that would involve major spoilers. Instead, you’ll just have to trust me when I say that at the end of this book you won’t be able to form coherent sentences.

Finally, we loved that this book induced a flood of questions and conspiracies about what the heck was going to happen in the sequel. There was many a fret about microscopic details that could have huge implications for some of the characters. A while back some of us actually met Rick Yancey (which took the word ‘epic’ to a new level) and it was rather uncomfortably that we recollected his words about all of his characters facing real danger and not being safe.

So go, read The 5th Wave and then join us in the agonising wait for the sequel!

On another note, our pick for next month is Undone by Cat Clarke and we will be meeting on August 8th in Costa from 7pm-8pm.

Bye for now,

Rosie :P

 
ISBN: 978-0-141-34583-3
Title: The 5th Wave
Author: Rick Yancey
Publisher: Penguin Books
Rating out of five stars: * * * * *

3 comments:

  1. Rosie, this post is AWESOME!!!! You are an utter STAR!! I may need to clone you for my brain...

    Kaylie :0)

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  2. I've only just read this (late to the party as usual) but I agree with everything you have to say. I can't wait for the sequel! If I lived on the right side of the M25, I'd come along to your next meeting. Instead, I'll just keep a lookout for your review.

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C'mon, write your thoughts down! :-)