Book review: The Host

“The Host” is a fiction novel written by Stephenie Meyer, the author of the well-known book serie “Twilight”. With the vampires and werewolves, Twilight wasn’t really my thing, however “The Host” was a whole other world (both literally and figuratively) and it didn’t bore me even the third time.  I love love love this book.

Earth isn’t the most unusual place to read about, aliens in Earth meh, aliens in Jupiter would be more interesting. Maybe not. And peaceful, nice aliens really aren’t the things people would like to read in  a science-fiction novel about aliens either.

The story mostly takes place in some kind of cave-labyrinth, which was interesting, I mean in Earth there aren’t much interesting places to read about. Let me say not as interesting as there would be on the Moon.

We do not exactly know the time the story takes place in, but I suppose sometime near, depending on the technology humans had. So it was relatable and I had to stop sometime to think “Wow, what would I do, if aliens like these came and tried to capture me to put some other alien inside my body, so my soul would disappear forever so that my body would host the alien in this world of ours?” Pretty interesting question, huh?

To summarize, aliens came to our world and saw the awful things we have done to the world and to each other and thought that it would be better if they conquered this planet. They put alien souls into human bodies. When they do this, the soul of the human gets weak and disappear. However the soul of Melanie Stryder (the main character) is so strong, it doesn’t leave the body, so Wanda (the alien soul) is trapped in a human body with a human soul. Wanda controls the body but Melanie is still there. The story is about Wanda/Melanie finding the human-humans (and Melanies loved ones), and the things they go through, because, like, aliens do not like humankind, the humankind doesn’t like aliens, and although Wanda still has Melanie inside her body, she is an alien and is treated that way. At least at first, and then by some people.

Feelings... Books like this, are the best, you feel everything the main character feels, in this case Melanie/ Wanderer (a.k.a. Wanda). Wait what? See, the main character had two identities; the human, Melaine Stryder, who committed suicide so her body wouldn’t be used by an alien. And the alien, Wanda, who is the nicest alien, (these aliens are all nice to each other but not to humankind, however Wanda is the purest soul, she is the nicest), she lived in 9 different worlds and is super old (more than thousand years old). When the main character(s) is (are) this interesting, eventually so will be her (their) relationships with others, her (their) feelings and thoughts.

Melanie hated aliens, but she had one inside her body, controling her body. Wanda was sad because Melanie hated her but she had nothing to do. Melanie loved Jared, that’s why Wanda loved Jared (or at least felt that way) because they felt everything together, but Melanie didn’t want Wanda to love Jared, however Wanda didn’t know how not to, and this goes on and on. Feeling like this, made reading a lot more interesting.

What is a Stephenie Meyer novel without love ( OK. Talking about this novel, it still would be awesome without love. Dear Stephenie Meyer, I love this book so much I am going to cry rn.) In Twilight there is a love triangle between Bella, Jacob and Edward, which we all know about. In this book , there is a love box. As I told before the main character here has two identites; Wanda and Melanie.

Ian, loves Wanda (and I love Ian) who controls Melanies body. Jared loves Melanie. Melanie loves Jared. Wanda doesn’t really know, because of Melanie's thoughts but she actually loves Ian ( I mean who doesn’t. I do.) See, although we have three bodies, we have four very different personalities.

P.S. : IAN IS SUPER CUTE. BEYOND CUTE. He is so nice to Wanda when everyone is against her, that I can burst into tears. I love him so much I literally miss him. We need a serie, guys. (Or just some more books about Ian.)

                                                                                                               Tui