Still Obsessed with The Host and in Denial about Dolls

 

I finished re-reading The Host last night, which was great all over again. I love how emotional Wanda is, how much angst the story contains. It’s such a crazy story, and I’m not going to say that there aren’t parts of it that are problematic, but it just makes me so emotional. I get so into the story and then the ending, at least for me, is just so rewarding and perfect. After I finished listening to the audiobook, read by the glorious Kate Reading, I picked up my ebook copy (I have a paperback copy as well), and read the bonus chapter that was added during the paperback run. The bonus chapter is from Melanie’s perspective instead of Wanda’s because it’s while Wanda is conscious, and it’s amazing because for a little while Melanie is so convinced that Jared helped kill Wanda that she hits the shit out of him. There is no one in the world that Melanie loves more than her brother, but if there is anyone who came close it was Jared. And for a few minutes when she thinks he killed Wanda, she sort of hates him. It is blind panic because of what Wanda has been planning. She doesn’t realize that Jared used the knife to give Doc the way out of his promise. Doc promised that he would let Wanda die and bury her with her friends, Wes and Walter, and used his word against him. She doesn’t want to be a parasite anymore, she wants to give Melanie back her body.

 

I’m rambling.

 

So anyway, I read the chapter that’s from Melanie’s perspective and how she reacts to everything after Wanda is removed from her body. She is so thankful to have Wanda alive, she can barely stand it, and at the same time, she doesn’t feel like she can have any of her own happiness until Ian knows what’s happened and that they’re going to get Wanda a body of her own. It’s just such a great moment.

 

Granted, I have a different headcanon from the bonus chapter. I mean, I accept that it’s not technically canon, but I think maybe Stephenie Meyer didn’t realize what she wrote.

 

At the end of Wanda’s time in Melanie’s body, Wanda thinks she’s going to off to die, but then she finds there’s nothing to be afraid of because she’s surrounded by warm, vibrant blue. Now, Jared, if I’m not mistaken, has blue eyes, but she’s constantly obsessed with how blue Ian’s eyes are. She calls them “sapphire blue” at some point, and she just notices them constantly. It’s how you realize that she’s falling in love with him without realizing it. She’s still very attached to Jared because of Melanie’s memories of and Melanie’s body’s constant reaction to Jared, but Wanda herself slowly falls in love with Ian underneath that and it’s her fascination with the color and warmth of his eyes that gives her away.

 

When she realizes that she’s being enveloped in this blue that makes her feel safe and warm, I can’t help but believe that it’s connected to Ian’s eyes, not Jared’s.

 

Granted, I suppose it could be something with the tank that they put her in to keep her safe while they find a host body for her, but I just don’t think that’s it at all.

 

In the bonus chapter, she has it that Jared follows her into the medical room and stops Doc from letting her die. Melanie goes to find Ian and tell him what’s happened after she knows that Wanda is safe in her tank.

 

But on top of Wanda commenting on the warm, vibrant blue that I still think is Ian, not Jared, the brother Jamie says that Ian wouldn’t let anyone else hold Wanda. He tells her when she wakes up in her new body that he held her in his hands and that she was so beautiful.

 

So I can’t help but think that he was the one there to guide her into the tank. That yes, maybe Jared was the one that threatened Doc, but that it was Ian who assisted.

 

I suppose, that the blue she was remembering could be from when they were pulling her out of her tank to put her in her new body and that’s when Ian was holding and it really was just Jared and Doc in the room when she was removed from Melanie’s body, but I still don’t think that Ian, who knows her better than anyone other than maybe Melanie, would not know what Wanda was up to. That he wouldn’t let her think he was asleep and then follow her. Or that he wouldn’t wake up a few minutes after she left to find the bed cold and know exactly where he needed to head, arriving just as Jared starts threatening Doc with a knife.

 

It doesn’t matter I suppose, but I think I’ll always believe that Ian was there in the room with Jared and Doc when they removed Wanda from Melonie’s body.

 

Wowo, that was a tangent.

 

What I meant to bring up was a fabulous little tidbit I read that came after the bonus chapter that was like an interview with the author and book club questions. The interviewer asked Stephanie Meyer if any of her characters ever surprised her. She said yes, all the time. She said the one that most surprised her in The Host was someone she had intended to be a minor henchman of the villain but who insisted he was more and become the love interest of the story. And I just love that so very, very much. Ian is the brother of the villain and he does initially try to kill Wanda (and Melanie, though he doesn’t know she’s “still in the body”), but when he sees Wanda try to defend Jared instead of letting Jared get hurt defending her from Kyle he starts to wonder if Wanda is the evil creature they all assume she is. It’s not long at all before he decides that she’s the most selfless, genuine creature he’s ever encountered and immediately takes up as her bodyguard and friend. She doesn’t understand at all.

 

Not long after, he tells her he loves her. She thinks that can’t possibly be right, and that what’s really happening is that he’s falling in love with Melanie’s body. And he gives this incredible speech that just kills me every time I read it.

“It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice, but what you say. It's not how you look in that body, but the thing you do with it. You are beautiful.”

Like oh God, how can you not love this boy?

 

That he was originally going to be a minor villain and instead became Wanda’s soulmate is just too glorious just cracks my heart open. Ugh. I want love like that. I want to feel love like that.