I was excited, but very tentatively so, to read this final installment of The 5th Wave series. Although I enjoyed the first book, the second ("The Infinite Sea") was...well, not a continuation I liked. So how did I think things wrapped up? I feel as if "The Last Star" was a solid mix of my feelings on the first two. Some good, some disappointing, and my rating falls firmly in the middle with 3 stars.

NOTE: The rest of my review contains spoilers for the WHOLE SERIES, and MAJOR SPOILERS for "The Last Star".

To start, I was SO glad the pace of the series finally switched back to the faster, fluid style that was found in "The 5th Wave" (T5W). Things actually happened, unlike the story line in "The Infinite Sea" (TIS) , which I felt dragged and lacked the punchiness of the first. I felt anxious at times, whereas my reading of TIS left me reading it simply so I could be done with it.
Also, similar to TIS, there were multiple points of view, but again, I liked them here in last book, mainly because the speaker was identified at the heading of each chapter. This wasn't so in TIS, and made for very confusing reading. I truly feel like this is a book series that benefits from the multiple POVs. Getting to be inside the mind of feelings of so many characters really built a more complete feeling of the universe and what was going on in different areas.

There were a handful of things that didn't work for me in this book.
I don't want to go into a huge, detailed explanation of each, but I'll mention a little thought on them:
Sam- In T5W, I could see him clearly as a 6 year old. He acted and spoke more like one, and it made him so very real to me. But somewhere between the end of T5W and the final book, Sam felt cold. I understand that he was put through military training, saw people killed, and was TRAINED to kill, but is there no shred of child left in him? I don't know...I just think Sam was lost somewhere, and I'm sad that he never showed emotions about Cassie dying. He just seemed to accept it and move on, and I CAN'T see a child that young being okay with the last member of his family dying so violently.

*Ben and Ringer- ???? Um. WHAT. Where did that ending come from? Is there ever going to be a YA book that ends with a pregnant girl content to just be single? Their whole relationship felt so sudden, and it didn't feel believable.

*Character development: making a character (like Cassie) go from being an average teenage girl to a teenage girl who fights aliens and shoots guns does NOT EQUAL character development. This goes for many of the characters in this cast, expect for probably Ben. The characters just got more tough and "edgy", but there was so little genuine change in any of them. Attitudes, actions, viewpoints, thinking processes- there was a real lack of development in these areas.

*This is a big one for me, and it's probably the driving force behind me not giving "The Last Star" and full 4 (possibly even 5) stars:
HUMANITY.
Throughout the whole series, the characters, especially Cassie, reflects on what it means to be human. This is a huge theme of these books. It begins way back in book 1, when Cassie writes in her journal that she thinks she may be the last human alive, and that makes her humanity:

"Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.”

And the theme continues:

“How do you rid the Earth of humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.”

“The minute we decide that one person doesn´t matter anymore, they´ve won.”

“Onto his stomach. Then knees. Then hands. His elbows quivered, his wrists threatened to buckle under his own weight. Self-centered, stubborn, sentimental, childish, vain. I am humanity. Cynical, naive, kind, cruel, soft as down, hard as tungsten steel.
I am humanity
He crawled.
I am humanity.
He fell.
I am humanity.
He got up.”

Throughout all the books, Yancey places so much emphasis on this: we are HUMANS. If you take away our humanity, there is only a human-shaped shell left. And you know what? In the first book, I felt this. I felt Cassie's emotions and fear, Ben and Sam's, all of them: they felt so real to me, and their voices were strong and loud even if they were scared. They persevere, the fight, they cry, and they HOLD ON to their humanity. They are so insistent on fighting back and keeping Earth, and there are moral dilemmas that must be faced.
But then...this is watered down. Greatly.
Reflections on "I am humanity" just become, "Wow, I miss McDonalds and milkshakes and TV and cars, humans will never be the same". Sure, longing for this things would be normal, but I feel as if the whole message of "humanity makes humans HUMAN" was lost. Everyone felt so cold and heartless for large chunks of time, and their willingness to kill (almost mindlessly) became stronger. What happened to the passion for morals, for fighting for a cause without senseless killing, for LIVING and not just surviving?
My thoughts are a little jumbled here, but I just wanted to see more HUMAN EMOTION. I wanted to see the characters struggle with their actions, like in T5W. I wanted more HUMANITY, the thing the aliens were so determined to strip away. At the ending, I think the aliens succeeded a bit. The characters felt much less human.

All in all, it was a decent conclusion. I didn't completely do it for me, but given how things have been set up for the readers, it worked. I'd be interested to see what Yancey produces next, although I'm not chomping at the bit to get my hands on it.
( )

I’m honestly confused. This series went off the rails after the first book, and this one destroyed what little hope I had of a personally satisfying end. It tries very hard to be something that it is not throughout this entire book, and to be honest? It’s so distracting that the emotional moments in the novel are difficult to pay much mind to. I mean seriously, it felt as if you couldn’t go 5 pages without a cringe-worthy one liner that would’ve been turned into a low-quality aesthetic photo in the years around when this was published.

Looking forward to more compelling reads leading up to the end of the year. ( )

That ending! It broke my heart! Such a bittersweet ending! Great conclusion to this trilogy. This last book is filled with action (which I love), sacrifices, and amazing writing. Once again, I find myself repeating over and over "that is such a great quote." I loved seeing what was going on with each of the characters but the one downside with multiple POVs is I get so interested in what's happening with one character, I get sucked in and then it switches to someone else and I'm just like "wait, go back! I need to what's going to happen to them!" But then I get sucked into what's going on with the other character and then it switches on me again, so frustrating. Also I was still confused about the whole "are they aliens? Are they not?" for most of the book, right up until the end. I wish that part was more clear early on. Those are the 2 downsides to this book which is why I gave it a 4 stars but otherwise I really enjoyed it. ( )

Setting aside all of the other plot holes and inconsistencies, the trying to be hip references that really end up sounding cringe worthy such as "YOLO", and "MLG", and "Selfie Stick", not to mention the fact that they have child soldiers flying helicopters, planning offensives, and generally depi... ( )

I didn't have much hope for this book after I found the infinite sea to be a disappointment. However this book surprised me and had a reasonable ending.
The more I think about it isn't the ending extremely similar to the divergent series? ( )