Rick Yancey's (The Monstromologist) novel of an alien infiltration is terrifying for its sense that the events in it could happen imminently, with references that place the action in the here and now.
Sixteen-year-old Cassie Sullivan opens the story, and her narration takes on the kind of stark, lone survivor quality of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend--that eerie feeling of being alienated from a world that was once familiar, and also of being the last one standing. Other chapters move between Cassie's unrequited high school crush, Ben Parish, who's been co-opted by the government, and a Silencer--one who has infiltrated the population but is allied with the Others, alien beings attempting to take possession of the earth for their own species. Cassie reveals that the Others choreographed the gradual extermination of the Earth's inhabitants with a series of four "Waves," ranging from a massive electromagnetic pulse to Silencers attempting to kill the surviving 3% of the human population. The 5th Wave, which unfolds through the course of the novel, is the most chilling of all.
Yancey's structure of moving among these narrative voices keeps readers tantalizingly off-balance. Who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, and how can you tell? Does being born human automatically give you humanity? If you are not born human, can you develop humanity? Can war cause you to lose your humanity--and if so, is that worse than death? Yancey raises penetrating questions in a suspenseful thriller. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness