I have, megan.

Re: The 5th Wave. It's about the character Evan. In the movie, the relationship with Cassie seems ridiculous (people were literally laughing at their dialogues) because he supposedly sees her in the woods and falls in love on sight and (follows her I guess? it's not totally clear) then saves her after she is shot by a sniper, taking her back to his place to tend her wound etc. Does it play out this way in the book? Given his apparent backstory (which BTW is not gone into at all and so we were like huh?), the relationship just didn't make sense so I was wondering if it there was more to it than that in the book to make it seem believable. It was too bad because parts of the movie were really well done, but that plot line make the whole thing seem ridiculous.

Isn't writing a whole novel a lot of work just to win the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest?

Isn't writing a whole novel a lot of work just to win the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest?

He was just making sure.

I've been working my way through Marion Zimmer Bradley's gothics, and I discovered that she "wrote" an urban fantasy/witchcraft/gothic series in the early 2000s. "Wrote", because it turns out that they were entirely ghostwritten by Rosemary Edghill. Which is great for me, because I love Rosemary Edghill's "Bast" mysteries, which were witchcraft-themed.

Oh, I loved the Bast mysteries! and I always wonder how many of the characters were based on real people.

She also wrote some Regency romances, three fantasy novels and, under the name eluke bes shahar (which may be her real name) she wrote a SF trilogy - the Hellflower books, which I really enjoyed (sometimes, when holding a door for someone I know, I'll say "I am a tongueless doorstop").

Thank you for reminding me of the Bast mysteries, Jilli. I have the three novels on your earlier rec, and just found and ordered the volume of short stories and novellas.

And Todd,I'm bookmarking the Hellflower books under the alternate name--thanks!

I do enjoy the way she writes.

If you're on instagram, the #authorlifemonth tag is full of bookish goodness

I loved her Regencies. They were so different than most of them.

Ok, megan, so I had to reborrow to make sure I wasn't talking out of my arse about 5th Wave, but here you go. Note that I have only read the book and not seen the movie.

In the book, the character Evan *is* the sniper who shoots Cassie. Basically, he's a Silencer who is supposed to kill her. He is tracking her to do so, sees her in the woods, sees the stuff with the Crucifix Soldier go down, basically stalks her instead of finishing her off. He goes to kill her...and then doesn't. And then having not done it, finds it increasingly harder to do so each time he gets the chance. He continues to stalk her, reading her journal, etc., eventually falling in love with her, more or less as a reason to justify to himself why he didn't kill her initially. He loses track of her, finds her again, and this is when he shoots her. But he, uncharacteristically, doesn't kill her. He waits for her to come out from cover and run. Except she doesn't run. She confronts him, and instead he runs. She would have died from her injuries, but he then takes the not-killing her a step further into saving her.

For her part, Cassie basically has killed the last person she's seen, at a point when she speculated she might be the last person alive, before meeting him. She's utterly reliant on him initially while he nurses her back to health, and she comes to the relationship considerably more reluctantly. She knows she can't trust him, but yields to, I think, the basic human need for companionship under duress. Then as events reveal that she is right not to trust him, she ultimately leaves him. He follows, and she finds herself relieved to see that this is the case, but the complexity of their background is never lost on her.

So, in my view, unlikely, but not completely unbelievable. Is that helpful?