The Host by Stephenie Meyer

The Host is a long book, 600+ pages, with very little action. Most of what happens is an emotional thing. There is a lot of talking and personal thoughts going on, but not much else. Basically, the human race has been taken over by these very peaceful 'souls' they inhabit the humans (hosts) and in theory the person that used to live in the Host is gone. But not Melanie Stryder. Her body is taken over by Wanderer, but she's still there. She's fighting for control at times and against a common enemy they begin to form a friendship of sorts. Wanderer (or Wanda as she ends up being called most of the time) sees Melanie's memories of her love, Jared and her little brother, Jamie, and ends up falling in love with them too. This sends them on what should be a suicide mission to find out if they're still alive.

Wanda is captured by a group of rouge humans living in underground volcanic caves in the desert. The group includes Jared and Jamie. Along with Melanie's (slightly crazy) Uncle Jeb and a couple other relations, as well as 30-odd other humans. As far as most of the group are concerned, Wanda should die. They believe that she's trying to trick them all and bring the Seekers to them to turn them all in to aliens. But She quickly finds allies in Jamie, Jed and Ian, who do their best to help her adjust and survive. Jared however, is not so easy to come around. He sees an alien in the body of the woman he loves, and hates it.

Most of the guys start out being very violent towards Wanda, but by the end pretty much everyone is in love with her. Melanie's Aunt Maggie and cousin Sharon refuse to work with her or look at her for the most part, but this is something brushed to the side. There could have been something more interesting done with it, but instead they're just two people who are occasionally mentioned to be full of anger and hatred for what she is. Wanda doesn't entirely give up everything about her race, she's completely non-violent and will do anything for anyone, no matter the cost to herself. She's not completely spineless, she will put stand up for those she loves and put herself between them an danger. But for the most part she's a pretty weak person. Melanie is tougher, but she's also completely blinded by love. She's gets really stupid around Jared at times and tries to do fight Wanda at those times to do stupid things, stuff that would get her killed. So both of them annoyed me a fair bit and I found the predictability really beginning to wear thin come the end.

Rather like Twilight, this book is okay, but it isn't great. It was pretty easy reading so I could sit and read it for a long while, but I had no problems putting it down to do something else and I didn't find myself anxious to get back to it. Okay read if you're looking for something not too heavy to read or too involved, otherwise, I'd look elsewhere.