The 5th Wave
The 5th Wave was a DNF for me, which I’m actually quite sad about. It’s not that it’s a bad book, because I don’t believe it is. Nor is it that the voice is bad, because the voice was, in fact, great. I think it was simply a case of not-for-me because I didn’t get with the writing style.
Whilst the voice is very strong, as stated above, I struggled with the execution (and I know this is a mere personal preference, so you should seriously go check it out and decide for yourself). The MC narrated in first person, and usually, for me, I find a much deeper connection when reading this POV, because there is so much opportunity for emotions to be expressed to draw the reader inside the mind of the narrator. However, there seemed to be such a HUGE disconnect in the ‘way’ this story is narrated, that it only created a massive distance for me, almost like a barrier blocking me from creating a bond with the MC. Added to that, the majority of the chunk of book I read is ‘told’. And not necessarily in an ‘in the moment’ kind of telling, but in a way that I’m not too sure which activities of the MC’s are current and which are past—except for the constant backstory explaining the ‘waves’, which come to sound slightly repetitive quite early on.
So, as I said, it’s not that it’s a bad book, more that the telling of it was in a style I struggled to connect with.
