Author: Stephenie Meyer
Publication Date: 2008
Page Count: 665
Genre: Science Fiction
From goodreads.com
Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. Our world has been invaded by an unseen enemy. Humans become hosts for these invaders, their minds taken over while their bodies remain intact and continue their lives apparently unchanged. Most of humanity has succumbed.
When Melanie, one of the few remaining "wild" humans, is captured, she is certain it is her end. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, was warned about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the glut of senses, the too-vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.
Wanderer probes Melanie's thoughts, hoping to discover the whereabouts of the remaining human resistance. Instead, Melanie fills Wanderer's mind with visions of the man Melanie loves - Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she has been tasked with exposing. When outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off on a dangerous and uncertain search for the man they both love.
My Review
I have been putting off this review for quite sometime now. I gave myself a little time to digest the story and decide if I really didn't like it as much as I thought I didn't like it. I was giving Meyer the benefit of the doubt here... and when all is said and done, I shouldn't have. This book was 660+ pages just because. There was no need for it to be this long. I think Meyer just wanted to be able to say... "hot damn, look at that, my book is the biggest on the shelf!" It was boring, slow moving and the end was a joke. Amazing how she tied everything up neatly in a bow and we all go on our merry way.... yea, not so much. How ridiculous.
Meyer is at it again. Her story line was all over the place, her characters are one-dimensional, and she writes a lot of words for not saying much. This could have worked better had she fleshed out more the the story with half the words. She is overly descriptive in a "Last of the Mohicans" kind of way (read: 6 pages to describe a tree.) I don't know what the infatuation with Meyer is. I don't believe she deserves the hype.
Meyer says this book is aimed more at the adult than the Twilight series which is aimed at the young adult crowd, but I disagree. The characters are so similar to Twilight it felt like just another extension of that world. I read a review that said... "I would like someone tell me what [Meyer's] fascination is with sappy, overly dramatic dialogue, 17-year old girls and over-protective older men who carry them while running?" This made me laugh out loud, partly because it is funny, and partly because it is very true. In the two Twilight series books I have read and The Host, the similarities are striking.
It is safe to say that this is the last Meyer book I will be reading. And I hope for the sake of young readers out there, they find a better author to obsess over. Please.
Overall Rating: 2/10
Next Review: Hip to be Square by Hope Lyda
