Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
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I expected to love this book, and I wasn't disappointed. Stephanie Meyer is a genius, a genius for telling an unsuspecting tale. This is science fiction - did you know it was going to be sci-fi? I didn't, but I wasn't disappointed. Meyer's first novel written for adults is captivating. Aliens, called souls in the book, come to earth and are inserted into the brains and spines of humans. In some cases, the human consciousness fights to stay awake and have a voice, but it's rare. One such rarity is the heroine of the novel, called The Wanderer, who takes over Melanie's body, but winds up sharing the body with her, then sharing her loves and her community.
I know it sounds like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I guess on one level it is, but it's also a love story and a thriller. This is the kind of expert storyteller Stephanie Meyer is. There is something here for most readers to enjoy. In fact, my only complaint of the novel was the tidy ending. I must have a problem with tidy endings, but I just could feel it all turning out too good and cute - and it did - but I still loved it, loved it so much that I longed to go back to it every time I put it down. What a gift to a reader a book like this is - a book that holds your attention and imagination, that surprises and attaches, that captures and holds you, if only for a few days.
I give a hearty thumbs' up to the new sensation from Stephanie Meyer - The Host.
