Aliens. That's the basis of Rick Yancey's apocalyptic world in The Fifth Wave. I'll be honest: this book was predictable, but the best kind of predictable. The whole time I was wondering "Am I right? I can't be right, please don't let me be... Aw damn I was right!" There were definitely a lot of emotions involved in this book. Cassie was a strong heroine, and Yancey definitely developed her well through flashes to her past before the waves. In the past, Cassie was just a regular, relatable girl. She went through a lot of pretty crappy stuff to become the girl in the present of the Fifth Wave. I liked her. While she seemed somewhat typical of your average dystopian heroine, her voice was more developed than some authors tend to give their female voices. When the POV was set around Cassie, the writing was pretty clearly Cassie which is always a really strong selling point for me. This brings me to the other POV in the book - Ben. The second you get Ben's POV, you know who he is - I'm not going to spoil it because it comes a good hundred or so pages into the book, but who Ben is will probably play a big role in the next book in the series. Ben was also well characterized, but I just didn't like his character as much. He still seemed a little fixed in his old mindset of Mr. Popular, and it got annoying in a few parts. However, he did some heroic things himself, and it was hard not to like his relationship with Nugget and Ringer. But I will say that my personal favorite guy in this book was Evan *pauses to swoon*. Wow, I loved him. The word I would use to describe Evan is good. He was just an all around good guy and very likeable, so I am going Team Evan all the way on this one. He was just *sighs* so many feelings! Another point of contention in the book was it's foundation: the Aliens. They weren't the little green guys you would expect from an Alien novel, and we don't even know what they look like for most of the novel. But the Aliens are not the nicest kids in town, and they definitely don't want the human race to live. An overall well-written book, but a little predictable for a dystopian. So I'm going 4.5 stars on this one, but I swear I mostly loved it and would recommend