Amazing. Brilliant. That's what I have to say about Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave. It's an instruction book on how aliens might really attack us, instead of the old-school, Independence Day-style invasions.Furthermore, the plot development and character building of this book makes most other YA series (looking at you: Twilight, Hunger Games, Divergent), look like childrens' picture books by comparison. 
 But I'm getting ahead of myself. 
 The 5th Wave begins by following Cassie Sullivan through the wilderness after the 4th wave of a recent alien invasion. She explains in flashback how the aliens arrived and no one saw anything of them, even as they devastated global electrical systems (1st wave), created immense tidal waves (2nd wave), unleashed a devestating disease using birds (3th wave, that killed her mother along with about four billion other humans), and now, apparently, have taken over or cloned, human bodies. Everyone is waiting for the 5th wave. No one knows what it will be, but everyone knows it's coming, and it will probably be the last wave before humanity is extinct. 
 The story unfolds by following both Cassie, and her high school crush Ben Parish (popular star football player who barely even remembers who she is) in their different paths as they try to survive the invasion, while learning the horrible truth of exactly what The 5th Wave is (and it's brilliant!). 
 I can't say enough about the originality of the alien invasion. I cannot think of any other story in recent or past history that has created such an interesting and original strategy by the aliens, and has developed the tension behind the reveal so masterfully. 
 Don't get me wrong, the book isn't all brilliant. For example, for a large chunk of the middle, where most of the interesting bits seemed to be happening to Ben, I began to question what the purpose of Cassie was to the story. However, because I was so in awe of the beautiful development up to that point, I decided to trust the author. A decision that I didn't regret. 
 One fact any reader of YA fiction has to face is that the most popular of these books feature a teenage girl as the main protagonist, and the story will have to deal with some love interest - usually more than one that she has to choose from. It is very rare that this isn't done in a hit-you-over-the-head obvious way that equates most YA fiction to little more than dystopian Mills & Boon stories for teenage girls (a notable exception is the Pretties series by Scott Westerfeld, which features the love/hate friendship of two girls as the primary relationship consideration, and the more literary stylings of John Green). Rick Yancey has a very interesting approach to the love triangle in The 5th Wave. While, by the middle of the book, we know the inter-relationships of all the major characters and how they feel about each other, they are split into disparate groups that don't actually meet until the climax. In addition, by the end he's decided to include two love triangles. One which has the female protagonist at the centre, and one with the male protagonist at the centre. I'm curious how he plays these out in book 2, but I hope he does as good a job of having them not dominate the narrative. 
 And that brings me to... the movie adaptation. 
 When I picked up this book, I'd not seen any ads for, or trailers of the movie. The only indication I had that it was a movie was the stamp on the front cover. After I finished the book, but before writing this review, I decided to check out release dates and reviews (since, apparently, it was released over a month ago). On Rotten Tomatoes, fans were so/so, critics hated it and, to be honest, I'm not surprised. So much of the story of The 5th Wave occurs in the characters' heads that I can imagine it would be challenging to capture the true feeling of the book on the screen. Furthermore, by all accounts of the reviews, the love triangle factored too much into the story - unsurprisingly, given this is Hollywood. In short, it seems this is one of those stories that was produced first in it's proper medium (words on a page) and conversion to other media will create pale imitations. 
 All in all, I highly recommend checking out The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. And if you like my reviews, please consider following my blog at buccobergreviews.wordpress.com