This is Not A Cliffhanger: The 5th Wave

The 5th Wave
Rick Yancey
5.0/5.0

The 1st Wave - Lights Out
The 2nd Wave - Surfs Up
The 3rd Wave - Pestilence
The 4th Wave - Silencer
The 5th Wave - ... I totally can't tell you without spoilers, but I'll sum it up:

Now... Onto the review...

Aliens are here. They are destroying the human race so that they can call our planet home. Cassie's parents are dead, and her brother has been taken away from her. She must find him. To find him, she must survive. To survive, she must trust no one.

When she meets Evan, he may be her one and only hope of finding and saving her brother. Can she trust him?

I'm just going to go ahead and say it right here, right now. You really need to go out and buy this book. Like yesterday. Stacey and I have been saying it since it was released: This could very well be the best book of 2013. It's THAT good.

I'm usually not a big fan of alien invasion stories. To me, they are generally generic. The aliens come in, they start killing people, and, despite being so advanced they can travel light years through space to get here, they can't do their homework. In the end we find this really ridiculous way to defeat them. The aliens die. We live happily ever after.

Yancey, however, creates an alien invasion like no other. If aliens actually came here, and actually did all of the things Yancey describes, we'd be utterly screwed.

Yancey's characters are freaking awesome as well. I absolutely love Cassie. While Cassie is a badass, she isn't a badass because she is somehow different than you and me. She's a badass simply because she has to be to save her brother and survive. She doesn't have any superhuman ass-kicking superpowers. Just sheer determination and grit. She also has plenty of snark, which, personally, I adore.

I also love to think that if I was in her shoes I could be that badass. Even though, in reality, I would probably be hiding in a hole pissing myself every time the wind blew.

Evan is that mysterious male lead that you are all "Don't trust him!" about in the beginning.

And the whole time you are begging Cassie to get her head out of her ass and pick up on all the mistrust you have for Evan and run for the hills. Then, when she does figure it out and run for the hills your suddenly all:

And then you suddenly realize at some point during all this you decided you loved Evan and she CAN'T LEAVE HIM! However, you have absolutely NO idea when or how that happened. It happened though. Also, I DAMN well BETTER get good news on the Evan front in the next book Mr. Yancey.

You know EXACTLY what I'm talking about Rick!!

Then we throw this guy Ben into the mix, who I do love. I do. I just love him in a different way. I'm sure he's totally swoon worthy to some. However, I really hope he gets friend-zoned by Cassie.

Don't get me wrong. I want Ben to have a love interest... Just not Cassie. I have the perfect person in mind... but you'll have to read the book, cuz I'm not going there and spoiling all your fun.

The only thing I really didn't LOVE about the story was her younger brother Sammy's POV. I guess I see why he wrote it in there, but it just wasn't as thrilling as the rest of the POV's in the book.

I could really go on and on about how much I love this book. HOWEVER, to say much more would cause epic spoilers and that's no fun for you. Instead, you know what you should do???