Exactly how steamy is this story?
PG-13
Like a lot of books on the young adult literature shelf, The 5th Wave features a strong connection between first love and apocalypse. (It's totally a coincidence, we're sure.) Over the course of the book, we watch Cassie, who's sixteen, transition from her schoolgirl crush on Ben Parish to a serious adult relationship with resident alien hunk, Evan Walker.
She makes out with him quite a bit, but it's a strictly above-the-covers situation, if you know what we mean.
That is, except for the scene in which Cassie and Evan have… alien soul sex? We're not sure what else to call it. In a bid to get Cassie to understand his alien consciousness, Evan offers to, er, show himself to her. It all happens in her mind, but it sure does sound like sex:
It doesn't begin in my head like I expected. Instead a delicious warmth spread through my body. I feel him; he is the warmth, too, and there's no separation between us, no spot where I end and he begins, and I open up like a flower in the rain, achingly slow and dizzyingly fast, dissolving in the warmth… (71.99)
So there's that. Also, there's a whole lot of swearing. No alien soul cussing, though. That would just be… weird.