This is the companion to Life as We Knew It, a YA novel about the struggle to survive in a world crippled by natural disasters. Life As We Knew It was fantastic, so I decided to read this one as well even though I had heard that it wasn't as good.

And the reviews were right; this was a disappointment, especially coming as a follow-up to such a great book. I don't regret the time spent reading it, but it managed to fall a bit flat for me despite containing some pretty horrific goings-on. I think, compared to Life As We Knew It, there were two main reasons that this didn't really work for me. First, I found it much more difficult to relate to the main character. The protagonist of Life As We Knew It is female, middle class, growing up in a suburban lifestyle pretty much the same as I did. The male protagonist in The Dead and the Gone comes from an extremely traditional and religious family, where the man of the house makes all the decisions, to the extent that a teenaged boy left in charge of his family might choose to send his two-years-younger sister off to a convent and not bother telling her until he came to take her from school and put her on the bus. A twelve-year-old girl is expected to do all the cooking and cleaning for her older brother, who has no idea what to do with a box of pasta. Becoming a nun is mentioned as a likely future on more than one occasion. This just isn't my world, and I think the effect of seeing the familiar world crumbling as the novel unfolds is lessened when it wasn't that familiar to begin with.

My other issue is that I really like books where the characters struggle for survival, relying on their ingenuity and so on to get by. This is what I expected to happen here, but throughout most of the book they didn't really have to do anything. Lunches were provided at school and other food handouts were provided once a week, so that starvation never really seemed like it could be an issue until the very end. Likewise, the electricity came on periodically so that they could boil water in the microwave, and the heating oil lasted almost until the end, and the whole survival thing just didn't seem like a lot of work.

And yet, despite all that, I'm still tempted to read the third book in the series when it comes out later this year, so this one can't have been all bad. I definitely recommend Life As We Knew It, anyway; just proceed with caution after that. ( )

Not quite as good as Life As We Knew It, at least in my opinion. But that may be because I could identify with Miranda better in that one. Still very compelling, and a bit more gruesome in this installment; in NYC, there are a lot more people, so we see a lot more dead bodies. I'm looking forward to the third book in this series. ( )

It's been awhile since I first read Life As We Knew It which was an awesome book but it took me awhile to recover and when I heard a third book was coming out I wanted to wait on The Dead and Gone until closer to the release date. This book was just as good as the first one and I gobbled it up in a day. This book was a little more disturbing than Life As We Knew It as it takes place in the middle of one of the largest US cities and seeing how the people react in this type of environment was scary as people are driven to rob dead or even not so dead bodies for any useful items.

I was actually not a big fan of Alex Morales. His sexist attitude towards his sisters even in this disaster situation was a turn off and a few of his other actions towards his sisters also turned me off. I had to remind myself that despite how well he was handling the disaster he is still just a teenager. His younger sister Julie probably impressed me the most with how she grew and matured through out the story. Yet again Pfeffer had me wanting to go out and stock up on canned goods, water and other survival gear. Especially in light of the recent earthquakes in my area.

I was glad I waited until I had access to book 3 in the series before reading this as I had to dive in immediately to find out what happens to both Alex and Miranda from the first book. This is a must read! ( )

This is the second book in the Last Survivors trilogy. I enjoyed reading this book after reading the first in the series, Life As We Knew It, because even though you know what devastation the comet hitting the moon can inflict, you get to experience the event through a whole new family in a different location. The NYC location and Alex Morales' family's life was a surprise, since the first book seemed to suggest that NYC was totally obliterated. But not so. Alex has new terrors and challenges apart from what Miranda experienced in semi-rural/suburban Pennsylvania. This book can be read separately from the first book in the series, although I found the first book did a better job of discussing the science and direct aftermath of the disaster better. ( )

http://tinyreadingroom.blogspot.com/2... ( )