This is a companion novel to Life As We Knew It. It was really interesting to read it, knowing how the environment will continue to worsen with our main character Alex completely clueless. (BTW, this is dramatic irony – when the reader knows something the characters don’t).
This one takes place in New York City, so we get to see the disaster from a different point of view. Alex’s parents are both missing (his mom presumably in the subway, his dad on the coast of Puerto Rico), his older brother is in the Marines and has been deployed to help with the disaster, which leaves Alex to care for his younger sisters Julie and Bri. Alex handles things differently than Miranda’s mom and he and Bri rely heavily on their faith to help them through. Alex struggles to be the man of the family while trying to keep them alive. He’s doing pretty well until the ash from the volcanic eruptions blacks out the sun and the snowstorm hits.
There seemed to be more horrific things in this one – people dying in the streets and the rats eating them, Alex “body shopping”, where he strips the bodies in the streets of anything he can use to barter for food for his sisters, and the contingency plan he comes up with to end his sisters’ suffering if things get too bad. If you made it through Life As We Knew It, you should be able to make it through this one too. I give this one an 8.5 – I couldn’t put it down but it was also more grim and disturbing than the other book.
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