"This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds - the most beautiful senses, the most exquisite emotions.. the most malevolent desires, the darkest deeds. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached-" Wanderer 
 Let me go on record stating that I'm a big Stephanie Meyer fan. From action, to romance, she has me hooked on every word. This story is incredible for a lot of reasons. The concepts aren't just a simple copycat of cliche teenage romance. This story is much more than your typical science fiction romance. 
 The story is set on Earth years in the future. In this time, alien life has taken control of most of Earth's population. They are a species of peace, whose home was dying and picked Earth because they saw humans to be creatures governed by impulse, destroying their planet with greed and violence. The alien creatures are spoken of as "souls" and they inhabit the human's bodies and use them as "hosts." During this process, they then become two separate beings sharing one body. The "soul" is the one who has the primary control of the body. Some humans survive in the "host" with the "soul," while others who are not as strong gradually fade away. 
 This story focuses on the two characters Melanie the human host and Wanderer, the soul, who inhabits her body. Upon inhabiting a host, it is the job of the soul to search the memories of the host for information on any other human stragglers, or "rebels" and to give a full report of the memories to their assigned seeker. It is then the seekers job to search out any other humans that have been located through the memories of the host. 
 Melanie is very strong and has a lot on the line. She determinedly protects the location of her little brother, Jamie, who is being looked after by the man she loves, Jared. Melanie made a promise to Jamie that she would always come back to him, and she is set on keeping it. Melanie constantly reasons with Wanderer that they need to protect Jamie at all costs, and eventually convinces her to escape the building where she is being monitored. As Melanie leads Wanderer to a secret bunker location, they are pursued by her seeker, who is tenaciously trying to get to the bottom of the situation. The seeker is sensitive to Wanderers unique circumstance due to her own issues with taming her human host. She becomes driven mad with the unwavering need to catch her, and so begins the hunt. 
 Meanwhile, Wanderer is forced to face the human survivors in the bunker who believe that she has killed Melanie. Treated poorly and abusively, she is talked down to and taken in like a prisoner. There, she meets Jared and Jamie, and her empathetic attachment toward them grows. Melanie, who is forced to see this all taking place through her eyes, is left in a painful position, not being able to speak to the ones she loves most. She urges Wanderer to keep the fact that she is alive inside the host body a secret, fearing that the humans will believe Wanderer is lying to them to save her skin, and kill her out of rage. Melanie's Uncle, who owns the bunker, is very kind to Wanderer, while his wife, is harsh and bitter. 
 For every moment of awkward, and every moment of sad, you feel it in the words on the page.The concept for this story is fascinating and brilliantly told. This story deals a great deal with prejudice, division, compromise, and acceptance. This is a delicate concept, that in the wrong hands could have very easily spiraled into something mediocre, but Stephanie Meyer's does a lovely job of making it real.