Author: Rick Yancey
Book Link

This book came my way as a suggestion from one of my students, who said he was eagerly enjoying it. I picked it up and while reading through it, he then informed me he stopped reading it for something else.

It’s not the first time someone recommended a book to me they didn’t finish.

Regardless, I started with the audio version and switched to the text once it became available and read through until the end. The backdrop is a young adult take on an alien invasion, but the process by which the aliens invade is mesmerizing.

Yancey did an incredible job at detailing out a unique twist on humans being attacked while encasing it in enough mystery to keep you turning the page. The book shifts between two points of view and each one slowly unravels the bigger picture at hand.

As the reader learns, the alien invasion didn’t come in one attack. Rather, it was a systematic process done in four waves, each one decimating the human population even further. The suspense is in finding out how the fourth wave functions (the aliens have taken on human form) and wondering what the fifth wave will be.

While there’s plenty of action and intrigue to keep the story moving, I did feel parts of dragged on longer than necessary. I get the author was telling two stories (sometimes three) and merging them together, but it almost felt like too much build up for not enough payoff. Perhaps this is remedied in the sequels now that most of the info dumping is done.

There’s enough in here to get me to the sequels and certainly enough to give the casual onlooker a worthwhile read.