Body snatchers in love seemed like a fairly interesting dilemma... until Stephanie Meyer got her hands on it.
Summary:
Aliens, called Souls, have invaded earth, using human bodies as hosts. Humankind is all but been eradicted, but one host, Melanie, is fighting back against her Soul inhabitant, Wanderer. Together the two track down Melanie's hidden family to ensure their safety. Suddenly Wanderer is falling in love with these humans and questioning her own existence in place of her host's.
Verdict: 3/10
Generally, I dislike Meyer's writing, but with a friend's recommendations, I thought I'd give her a second chance. But like Stephanie Meyer’s previous books, I found this one to be underwhelming and full of writing cliches. This book was entirely unremarkable.
The characters were like all the others in a teen dystopian novel, two-dimensional, even with one character really being two.
My biggest pet peeve about Meyer is that her character descriptions never match up with their actions. For instance, a character is described as completely peaceful and never raising their voice, but literally the only time they're shown, they're yelling and being violent. It doesn't match up.
There was potential in the dynamic between Mel and Wanda, but so much of the novel was unnecessarily drawn out. There was so much time spent hiding in caves with repetitive interactions and sentiments between the characters. Besides the occasional attempts on Wanda’s life or the brief and dramatically-conflicted romantic moments, there wasn’t much to this novel.
I thought it could have ended early multiple times, but Meyer just kept on going… and going… and going. I almost gave up multiple times but I just maddeningly wanted my favorite character, Ian, to finally get the ending he deserved. The real ending was so anti-climatic.
Spoiler Alert
Yet again, Meyer repeated her Twilight-esque heroine who is tossed around between two male love interests until she finally decides to take charge of her own life… by giving it up to the people who are tossing her around.
Ultimately, this “final, brave choice” by Wanda is disregarded entirely by the humans. They choose a body for her to be brought back in and to live with them for the rest of her life. The main character gets no say.
Every plot point was convenient, and even the ones that I thought, ‘oh good, here comes the climax’, were resolved within pages. Like when the group is pulled over by Seekers for speeding and are afraid of being found out. I was waiting for Wanda’s Seeker to be there or to have to fight there way out of captivity. Instead Meyer chose to subvert this possible conflict and just let her heroes say a few couple sentences to talk their way out and leave in peace.
Spoiler Concluded
This is the type of novel that goes on for nearly 700 pages. Not one of complex characters or conflict, but one of mediocrity and mundane plots.
Body snatchers in love was a fairly interesting dilemma. Still, I’m not really sure where Meyer was going with this. The only meaning I got was that love trumps all... including interspecies differences and intergalactic take over.
I thought Meyer did a decent job at bringing out Wanda’s view of the beauty of humanity: the ideals, the beliefs, the moral compasses, and the emotional aspects. But then they were completely thrown off by Wanda’s interspersed stories of her life on other planets. I thought they were oddly placed and took away from the story.
She should have stuck to what she is known for and that’s the romance. There were some points of good heart wrenching emotion. Even then, I believe her romances are juvenile and portray an unrealistic version of love where the woman completely loses all personality and sense of self.
Good luck getting through this novel. I must admit I’m glad she stopped at one instead of drawing it out into four books. Never again.
(If you want a good body-snatching romance, read "The 5th Wave." That one is worth the time. But that'll probably get its own review at some point.)
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