What an unexpected gem! 
 Originally, I had no interest in reading this book, simply because I was under the misguided impression that Meyer couldn't write a good story. This sprung from the unfortunate YA...thing...that was Twilight (another annoying trend-fandom simply a replacement for High School Musical) and all its backlash. 
 But it turned out "The Host" is nothing like that vampire romance mush! It's actually a beautiful (and well written!) story about an alien named Wanderer who is struggling to find her place in the universe. Quite a tricky thing, too, when you can only live by attaching yourself to other living beings, stealing the use of their bodies and brains... 
 This style of SCI-FI is usually told from the POV of the humans involved, falling more into the horror category, whereas this book turns that on its head completely with our heroine (who is VERY likable) being the "evil alien". 
 The romance was actually very sweet. While I didn't care for Jared's character, I liked Ian A LOT, and thought him very worthy of Wanderer. It was also clever of the author to introduce Ian as almost a villain (he does try to kill Wanderer before he gets to know her and they fall in love) and then slowly reveal that he is actually a good guy who was just trying to do the right thing all along. 
 Interesting, the book doesn't HAVE many "villains" so to speak. Everyone is overall doing their best to cope with a tough situation. Even the Seeker whom Wanderer has to run away from at the beginning of the book isn't all bad; she's just having her own struggles adjusting to life on Earth. Made doubly hard considering unlike Wanderer she hadn't lived previous lives on other planets to give her more perspective. 
 The story does start slow, and frankly if I hadn't seen the movie first I might have felt a little less inclined to believe it was going to pick up and become a really engrossing read. But I assure you, it DOES. Once you really get into Wanderer's head and her Host's memories, you aren't going to want to put this book down, despite it being very thick and heavy. 
 A book every urban fantasy/sci-fi lover should read! Highly recommend!