*This book doesn’t need any elaborate summaries (lots of that around on the net already. Plus, the blurb is more than enough to get you started), grand explanations (unbiased, man, read this one unspoiled and unbiased and you’ll get the most out of it), or any other justifying blablablas. Just get the book already!

Adam Strand is 16 and he has killed himself (and has actually died)… 39 times, but for some reason he never stays dead, which is the only thing he really wants: to not exist. Just like As Simple As Snow has garnered so many different responses (just check out the Goodreads page on the book), the same will be true for this one. And to be honest, the cat feels a bit conflicted about it too. As much as I love whole parts of this book, there are also parts that made me feel indifferent about Adam Strand’s fate. Adam Strand can be such a little shit sometimes, such an unbelievably prime example of the disease that is rampant amongst many contemporary teens – total boredom and lack of engagement, a sort of existential ennui coupled with lots of irrelevant whatevers – that it’s hard to get into the character of Adam at times.

That being said, though, Galloway’s prose is so ever so descriptive, and even when he’s having Adam explain his total and utter boredom for the umpteenth time, there’s a sort of poetic quality that’s hard to overlook here. So the writing is definitely above par, a very learned kind of writing too, erudite, with definite signs of lots and lots of editing!.

The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand is also one of those almost plotless books. There is some plot, of course, but it’s really minimal: Adam dies…like 39 times, and there’s a very significant narrative thread involving a 10-year-old girl as well, Maddy. But I think it’s almost a novel of ideas, an introspective investigation in the concept of suicide. By its very nature, this is obviously something that will alienate some people, and even have some people vehemently hate this. However, whenever Adam describes the feelings he had just before he decides to kill himself again, his whole inner emotional outburst  is so incredibly powerful, so very enlightening too in trying to put the almost incomprehensible into words. And doesn’t everyone love a bit of self- and world-loathing:

“Here’s the thing – the secret of it all: remember one of my father’s favorite lines, the bit about how there are two categories of people, the miserable and horrible. Well, here’s the real truth – we’re all horrible. There is no comfort in the miserable because we’re all horrible, grotesque, immeasurably flawed, impaired, repulsive, revolting freaks wandering around with exaggerated awareness of our own misshapen defects or no awareness at all….I don’t know which one is worse, but make no mistake – Woody Allen and my father were wrong – we’re all horrible. We walk through each day with our gross imperfections, blighted, stained, less human than we want to admit. We lie, cheat, steal, kill – either a little or a lot – or allow it to happen; we are perpetrators or accomplices, predator or prey, or both.” (p.228)

Once more, this is the type of book that will raise a lot more questions than it actually answers (to name a really obvious one: does Adam have any ‘physical’ leftovers of his 39 suicides??). That will be yet another reason for a polarized response to it of course: people often just want things neat and with a proper sense of closure, while Galloway doesn’t make any sort of judgment, nor does he have any of the minor characters make any sort of moral judgment about what Adam does. If there’s anything at all, it’s first fascination, which later turns into indifference… which is infinitely worse than the fascination part, of course.

The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand may not be for everyone, but it is definitely compelling and thought-provoking enough for me to give this a solid 3.5 and maybe even 4 stars…

It’s about an uncomfortable topic, for sure: a 13-year-old (Deanna) caught in a car of a senior, both with their pants down, by her father… only to be called the school slut forever after. If this were the only thing Story of a Girl were about, it would already be hard to take in, but Zarr throws in a main character who – despite not wanting to be defined by her past – never really becomes an entirely lovable character either (and there’s a thing or two to be said about writing unlikable characters, right?).  Deanna is 16 now, and ever since that event she’s wanted to escape her past and the stamp she was given. That didn’t quite work out for her, though. At school she’s still that girl and her dad hasn’t even so much as looked at her since that evening.

Oh man, this book is such a punch in the face. I really really loved it! Deanna made a mistake when she was still just a kid… 13 she was, and messed up, and yes, taken advantage of… and of course she wasn’t responsible , but she sure as hell thinks she was. And now, 3 years later, she’s in love with the (only) friend who stood by her since then, but who happens to have a girlfriend who happens to be Deanna’s only other friend… Things get ugly and complicated, and Deanna doesn’t know how to respond to it all, and she acts the ways she acts, and… but it’s so incredibly honest and real that it’s hard to see fault in the way Deanna acts now, to me. It’s not that I feel sorry for her, it’s that I get why she is the way she is.

Compassion, selfishness, redemption, loyalty, truth. It’s about all of these things and more. If I love The Lucy Variations half as much as I love this book, it’s going to be one hell of a book!

I’m not going to give away too much of the plot here. Let it suffice that it’s like Stephen King’s The Stand (love this!!) meets Ilsa J. Bick’s Ashes. The Hunger Games  also didn’t have the most original of plots and much of its success was because Suzanne Collins managed to fuse together some crucial elements to come up with this explosive story at the right time: the Harry Potter and Twilight wave had come and passed and now there is a Hunger Games wave that will eventually also pass. Will the same thing come true for The 5^th Wave? Only time will tell of course, but I can say that it’s really obvious it was written to have that instant (not too critical) mass appeal (also marketing… seriously, I heard numbers like $750,000!!).

And even though I read the book in no time (Yancey of course is a gifted writer, so that should come as no surprise.), I can’t say, that I was wowed by this book the way I was after reading the Monstrumologist series. Monstrumologist had that something more, that indefinable thing in a book that you instantly recognize when you come across it, but that’s so hard to pinpoint. It had horror and humor, and there was Dr. Warthrop and Will Henry, character depth, great adventurous plots, and it was so refreshing, and there was a definite and clear mark of a very gifted author at work. And I knew that The 5thWave wouldn’t be The Monstrumologist, but I’d hoped to see that spark as well: maybe in the characters, or maybe in the writing, or maybe in the setting… but I can’t really say that it was there.

Again, don’t get me wrong, I liked reading it, but there were definitely a couple of instances where I went…ouch…  For one, I wasn’t really sold on the multiple point of view narration. I thought it sort of took away the attention from Cassie’s story, who I was definitely interested in. Second, and probably more disturbing than the multiple POV thing was the love story setup… First of all, Evan: just no, he’s creepy, the way Edward Cullen is creepy, so: stalkerish. So that’s a definite no.  But, second, there’s a whole love triangle being set up and I swear to god, WTF, get done with the love triangles already.

Anyway, I love a good Science Fiction story once in a while, and if you throw in deadly virus thingies, well, that’s fine too. I think Yancey did a fine job mixing together some classic (or cliché…po-ta-to, po-tah-to) SF tropes, ready to be adapted to the big screen in no time (seriously, that’s how it reads), but I think I’m more impatient to read The Final Descent than I am to read the next installment of The 5^th Wave… (which I will also read, of course!).