The Host

Earth has been taken over by Souls. There are only a few humans remaining and
they cannot seem to find each other. Melanie has just been captured by the Seekers
to become a Soul but she is fighting to take her body back so she can save the rest
of the humans on Earth. Stephanie Meyer’s The Host interested me with the rough
adventures of Melanie and her Soul, Wanderer.

Before Melanie was captured, she had been hiding with her little brother,
Jamie. They had been in hiding for a total of two years. The Souls have taken over
Earth and the rest of Melanie and Jamie’s family. They think that they are the only
two humans left on Earth. One night on a raid for food, Mel finds that they are
wrong. Looking for food in an empty house, Melanie was scared by a figure that had
jumped out at her and held her down. She thought that this figure was a Seeker that
had found her and was going to take her to get a Soul put in her and then kill her.
The figure turned out to be Jared, another human survivor. After finding Jared,
Melanie and Jamie did not struggle as much for food and shelter. Jared seemed to be
a miracle worker. He gave Mel the hope to believe that more humans had survived.

After a few months with Jared, Melanie got the courage to leave Jamie with
Jared and try to find her cousin that she believed had also survived. Melanie
traveled many days to Chicago where she was then caught by a Seeker. Mel’s body had
a Soul inserted and her memories were supposed to be used to find other humans.
Every other human host had been used for this purpose. The difference with Melanie
was that she did not die during the operation. She was still alive and in her body
when the Soul, Wanderer, was controlling her. Melanie fought to keep her memories
hidden from Wanderer. The main memories that she blocked were those about Jared and
Jamie. A few weeks after the insertion of Wanderer, Melanie began talking to her.
After the first annoying conversations between them they became friends. Mel began
trusting Wanderer with her secrets and broke down the wall that blocked Wanderer
from seeing her memories. When Wanderer saw Jared and Jamie, she fell in love with
them and decided not to reveal them to her assigned Seeker but to go find them and
be with them.

Wanderer began her journey through the desert in her car but had to give up
the luxury because the desert became too rough. She also ran out of gas. The only
hope of finding Jared and Jamie was to follow the lines and landmarks that Melanie’s
crazy Uncle Jeb had given her many years ago. On this long adventure, Wanderer and
Melanie almost die of dehydration.

On the night that they had given up on finding their loved ones and almost
died, they are found by a familiar face from Melanie’s memories. This face belonged
to Uncle Jeb. They had finally found his hideout. When Jeb gets Wanderer into the
caves, she sees many more humans. Jared and Jamie had made it there also. The only
problem was that Melanie’s body now belonged to Wanderer and she is a Soul. Humans
do not trust Souls no matter who their hosts are. The only humans that trusted
Wanderer were Jeb and Jamie. They kept her safe because they had a theory that
Melanie was still alive and was sharing her body with Wanderer. Wanderer just hopes
that these two humans will be enough to keep her safe from the rest of the humans in
the caves and from the angry Seeker that refuses to give up searching for her.

I recommend The Host to people who enjoy long books with a lot of action and
adventure.

619 pages