I received a free copy of this book from the publishers with the agreement that I would give an honest review.
This is a book that took some getting into, it took me three goes before I got really engrossed. It starts out quite slowly and then builds to quite an explosive ending.
Life for Cassie changes not when the mother-ship appears and not when her mother dies. It changes the day her little brother is put on a yellow school bus by the soldiers and her father is murdered by the same soldiers. When the camp they have been living in with other survivors of the first four waves is wiped out by one bomb. Sure she's felt all the changes before that, when the power went out, when people died and when the scourge wiped out billions of people but she hasn't changed until then. Or so she keeps telling herself. She also thinks she's the only one who it's happening to, that's the thing with teens. It's all about her. When she gets shot on her way to get Sammy back she thinks she's going to die and that's when she has a re-think.
When she wakes up in a cabin, hooked up to an IV drip she has more questions than she knows what to do with and Evan, her rescuer is not the chatty type. When she is finally health enough to go for Sammy, Evan goes with her. And for me, this is where the book really gets going.
Rick Yancey has written a brilliant book with strong characters who are challenged and tested and show just how resilient people, kids especially, can be.