Look at it for what it is and can you honestly say it's that good? Probably not.Īnd yet, I read it again, knowing what I did not know the first time around. Is it so mind-blowing that it deserved all that gushy praise I gave it? Maybe it wasn't. Is The 5th Wave really that original? I guess not. And I find myself, post-emotional response, agreeing to many things said. People say they don't understand the hype, that The 5th Wave doesn't even deserve to be classed as science-fiction, that it is - literally - 'the worst book I have ever read'. An Ember in the Ashes is another good example. Was it really that good? To deserve all this hype? Is any book ever that good? Should I have been more critical? Should I be embarrassed by my gushy, bright-eyed emotional response? I feel this way about so many books that I rave about early and that become huge later. But later, after time had passed and the immediate emotional effect had waned, I was reading the negative reviews and felt somewhat. I could sense the distrust and fear in the air. I thought it was atmospheric and perfectly creepy. Enough, even, to write a song, with my sister, inspired by it. It is this latter experience that always has a strange effect on me.īecause, when I read The 5th Wave, I enjoyed it immensely. Sometimes these books get read by a few people and disappear, and sometimes they take off and become huge, gaining ever more praise and criticism.

I am an emotional reader and an emotional rater afterall. Sometimes I give them 4 or 5 star reviews, rated purely based on the emotional high I experienced. I haven't read any reviews before, so the first experience is entirely my own, as I find it.Īnd sometimes I love these books. Sometimes, I am lucky enough to get my hands on an ARC of a book and go into it with as close to no expectations as possible. “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans.” - Stephen Hawking

The 5th wave series