The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer

For me, this has been a long awaited sequel for me to actually sit down and read. It’s been out for awhile, I’ve just had so many books on my shelf to read. I have to say that, as a sequel, I wasn’t disappointed at all.

In this next chapter of the world in Life As We Knew It, we are taken to New York City. We are introduced to Alex and his two sisters Bri and Julie. Alex is the oldest and after the catastrophic event of the moon being hit by an asteroid, he is in charge of the family. Their father was in Puerto Rico at a family funeral and most likely killed when the small island was decimated by tsunamis. Their mother had to go to work at the hospital and on her way was most likely drowned in the subway trying to get to that hospital. They have an older broth, Carlos, but he is in the Marines and no where near them. They are all alone and have to fend for themselves. Through all this hardship, they always keep their faith in God and believe that they will make it through. Although they suffer many losses, they end up being rescued in the end.

I enjoyed Life As We Knew It a bit more than this sequel, only because I wasn’t expecting anything. I already knew some of what happened in this novel because of the previous novel, and that took away from this book. We weren’t shocked at the moon being knocked closer to Earth. The one thing that redeemed this book for me and made it a good sequel was the rawness of this novel. I may be a little morbid, but I enjoyed the death, decay and pure emotion of this book. It’s what made this sequel so good. We already had the storyline, what we didn’t have was a different perspective were it wasn’t so peaceful. Not that I’m saying that it was every peaceful in any of the stories. It’s just that in Life we didn’t have that much death. Yes, they were hungry and didn’t know where they were going to get their food from. But they had their mom. They had an adult that could tell them what they should be doing. In this one, they relied on themselves, teenagers. They had to grow up fast and realized that the world isn’t what it always appears to be. They grew up to appreciate everything they had. That’s a good life lesson that they unfortunately had to learn a REALLY hard way. More people could use that lesson in real life.

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

I have to say that this is one of the best books I have ever read. I am absolutely in love with this book. It was great from beginning to end. I don’t want to say too much, because it is one of those story’s that you need to find out the details on your own and be wowed by them or shocked. But I will give a short summary of it.

Miranda, Matt, Jonny and their mother find themselves surviving a major world disaster. (What kind of disaster? Read it to find out) They have to learn how to survive with each other and not lose their minds in the process. This is an awesome survival story that will make you think about how we all take each other and our world for granted. While I was reading it and even now, I would dream about this story and how it would affect my life. I caught myself thinking about the story even when I was at work or driving in my car. This is unusual for me, unless I’m completely into a book. And with this I was, I couldn’t imagine being in their shoes and staying sane. I truly felt sympathy for all the characters. The fact that I even felt anything tells me how great of a story this is, I will definitely recommend this book to people. I think everyone should read this story just to let us know that we aren’t as safe as we want ourselves to believe and that at any moment our lives can change. The question is…will we be able to handle it?