The Host - Stephenie Meyer

[goodreads]

Title: The Host Author: Stephenie Meyer Genre: Sci-fi Rating: 5/5 # pages: 631 pages Date read: May 2008, September 2009, June 2012, January 2018

Summary: Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. The earth has been invaded by a species that take over the minds of their human hosts while leaving their bodies intact, and most of humanity has succumbed.

Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, knew about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, 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.

Melanie fills Wanderer's thoughts 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 yearns for a man she's never met. As outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love.

Review: Stephenie Meyer did it again. She really knows how to write books I can't put down. I 'read' this book as an audiobook, which turned out to be a mistake. One should never listen to an un-put-downable book, as it's so much more difficult (and slower!) to sneak chapters at opportune moments. I wasn't much more than half way, before I went to order it off Amazon, as I knew I had to own the print version.

I hadn't read any reviews, blurbs or anything about the book, so all I knew was that it was a love triangle between a man, a woman and an alien. To show you how little I knew, I thought the alien was male! I was soon corrected. At first I was amazed at how much the plot seemed like that of the "Animorphs" series, until I realized the aliens here are pacifists, not cruel monsters.

The book starts out very confusingly as you're dropped right into the action, but once you make sense of what's going on, it grabs you, and if you're anything like me, you'll find yourself totally sucked in and unable to leave it. I was very pleasantly surprised and loved it.