By Susan Beth Pfeffer
Source: Purchased
My Rating: 3 / 5
This is the third book in the series, following Life As We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone, both of which I read and loved.
Here is the Goodreads summary:
Itβs been a year since a meteor collided with the moon, catastrophically altering the earthβs climate. For Miranda Evans, life as she knew it no longer exists. Her friends and neighbors are dead, the landscape is frozen, and food is increasingly scarce.
The struggle to survive intensifies when Mirandaβs father and stepmother arrive with a baby and three strangers in tow. One of the newcomers is Alex Morales, and as Mirandaβs complicated feelings for him turn to love, his plans for his future thwart their relationship. Then a devastating tornado hits the town of Howell, and Miranda makes a decision that will change their lives forever.
In this book, the protagonist of Life As We Knew It (Miranda) and the protagonist of The Dead and the Gone (Alex) meet face to face. I was surprised when readingΒ TDATG that the story had totally shifted its focus from Miranda and her family to Alex, and so I was initially happy to be ‘reunited’ with Miranda.
Eventually, though, it seemed to me that this book was suffering from the ‘second book syndrome’, even though it’s the third book in the series. Miranda was still whiny and a bit frustrating, and while there were major events (marriage, more extreme weather, people dying), I felt that there wasn’t a lot happening, and other than Alex and Miranda’s blossoming romance (which sort of wasn’t even…more on that in a second), there just wasn’t much to read about.
When I say that the romance between Alex and Miranda wasn’t even a romance, I totally mean it. They didn’t seem to like each other at all, AT ALL, until suddenly they were kissing and in love. I know it’s the end of the world, and I don’t have any problems with the two of them being in a relationship and being in love and all that, but it just seemed so sudden to me. She didn’t like him much and then suddenly they were in love. Sigh.
I still like Alex. I wish, though, that there had been more detail provided about his travels with the others to Howell. It seemed like there was a lot that happened, but no one really talked about it too much, which of course made me super curious.
As the summary above says, it’s been about a year since the meteor collided with the moon. I really wanted to see how things had changed over the past year with Miranda’s family and their survival. However, it didn’t seem that anything had really changed at all, until of course the end of the book, when something happens that forces the characters to make a huge change.
So I have mixed feelings about this book. I didn’t dislike it but I didn’t love it. I was hoping to enjoy this as much as I did the first two, so I’m sad to say that wasn’t the case. It was a quick read, but the story didn’t feel like it moved along much.
I mentioned at the end of my review for TDATG that this was the last in the series, but it isn’t. There is actually a fourth book coming out next month, The Shade of the Moon (and I was lucky enough to get an e-ARC). I don’t know if that is supposed to be the final book or not, but I’m looking forward to reading it and seeing what happens next, especially since it takes place a few years after the events of this book.
If you like survival stories and have enjoyed the first books in this series, I would recommend continuing on with this one. Just because I didn’t love it doesn’t mean you won’t!
