This is the second book in a trilogy that started with "The Fifth Wave."
As the book opens most humans have been wiped off the Earth by an alien race and a small group of young survivors (ranging from kindergartners to teens) are struggling to survive. For the moment they're holed up in a run-down motel infested with rats.
The book basically follows several storylines. First, teen Ringer, an excellent shot, takes off to scout out a better home for the winter. She soon runs into big trouble and her story picks up again towards the latter part of the book.
Meanwhile, a small cadre of survivors, including Ben (the group leader), Cassie, her little brother Sam, and a few other survivors remain in the hotel. Cassie is awaiting the return of Evan, an unusual boy who promised he'd find her after the catastrophic finale of book one.
Evan was badly injured and has been nursed back to health by Stella, who's his female counterpart. Evan and Stella have different goals, however, which leads to some of the more dramatic scenes in the story.
For the most part, there's not a lot of action in this book. The characters speculate a lot about the aliens' reasons for coming to Earth, why they didn't just annihilate the entire human race with a meteorite, why some aliens have 'downloaded' themselves into human bodies, and so on. As a reader, I hoped some of this would be explained in book two - but it wasn't.
This book is clearly just a bridge in the trilogy. By the end Ringer has had some experiences which (presumably) will be important in book three and the other surviving members of the crew are also poised to forge ahead. Overall the book is disappointing but I'll read book three in hopes of getting the scoop about what's going on with the aliens.
Rating: 3 stars
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