The Host (In Review)

Yep, I read the Host from Stephenie Meyer. The lady that wrote those vampire-human-werewolf love triangle books that have become a movie phenomenon. A co-worker thought that I would really like this book....

The plot: Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers - with a feminine love twist.

The book centers on a woman that seems to be awakening from some sort of coma. And she is trying to get a grasp of who she is, why she is in the condition she is in. She has been "inserted" to her host and should be able to playback of the memories of her host like watching movies. But something is dreadfully wrong, the host is still thinking, still living. So the two inhabit the same body. They end up being sort of a blend of each other like an alien with a schizophrenic disorder.

Over a lot of pages (and I mean a lot of pages - several hundred) we find out that Mel had a younger brother and loved another named Jared (another human they found while on the run while hiding from the "invaders") We also find that the human Mel leads the alien Mel (a.k.a. Wanda) to a cave full of human survivors. After that, the book turns into a shoe-in for a Lifetime tv movie. It has all of the stuff you might expect, a woman that is in love (and confused) but won't talk. A man that is more confused than she is. Add another man that is in love with Wanda. And imagine how interesting that can get when you consider that Wanda lives in Melanie's body... Mmmm... And by the time you find all of that out you realize you have actually fallen asleep.

Now I remember why I don't often read fiction. The ideas about the other alien inhabited worlds are silly at best. And though the plot was onotially interesting, the book bogs down with love squares (or octagons) and slows to an absolute crawl in the middle. To many "feelings" and not enough momentum of the plot. It gets way to sticky for way too long in my opinion. Rest assured that this very long story has about as much of a happy ending as it can. I think Stephenie is a good writer and she goes out of the way to prove it. She wants to prove it so bad that she tries for 619 pages. If this book was 300 pages I might have given it a B. But as bloated as it is, a D- is just my way of being kind.

Should you read this book?: Not unless you like Lifetime Network