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This World We Live In The Last Survivors Book 3 Susan Beth Pfeffer Books

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This World We Live In The Last Survivors Book 3 Susan Beth Pfeffer Books

I just finished Life as we Knew It, and was blown away. When I saw there was a follow up, I had to see what happened. I kind of wish I hadn't.

This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer takes place a month after Life as we Knew it. After getting halfway through this book, I realized there was a second book I hadn't read, but didn't feel I needed that book to read this one. Miranda continues to write about how life is after the meteor disaster and the struggle to find food and other necessities. Except it seems like all of the characters have regressed in their maturity. Miranda starts whining about how bad life is again and fights with her mom about ridiculous things. Matt, who may have been my favorite character in the last book, now is completely self centered and can only talk about a girl he's found while fishing. New characters enter the book, but they only add to the whine and dine that is this book.

I was completely underwhelmed by this new entry in this series and hope that this is the last one. Life as we knew it is a wonderful book and can act as a stand alone. I encourage people to see it that way.


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This World We Live In The Last Survivors Book 3 Susan Beth Pfeffer Books Reviews

I loved the first two books of this series; they took a really interesting in-depth look at what it would be like if something crazy but possible happened. I loved how real they felt, how simple yet heart-wrenching they were. The characters all felt like very real people. The focus on their day-to-day lives helped to ground the book in reality while emphasizing how much impact an event like this would have on the world.

This book, however, did none of that.
This review is going to have spoilers; skip to the last paragraph if you'd like to pass those by.

The first half was great; it felt like a continuation of the first book in the series, and I loved revisiting Miranda's story (which I have read at least 3 times now). Her voice held steady, the character development was there but realistic, her family still felt concrete. And then Matt came home with a wife he'd met three days ago. That was the first moment where I was completely jarred out of the story. My thoughts boiled down to "What? Matt wouldn't do that."

The entirety of the first book had shown how desperate this family was to hold together; Matt bringing in a complete stranger felt like it contradicted with that entire theme. I read through the next few pages, dreading the moment she would steal their stuff and run off. Even Miranda was skeptical -- after all, Syl's only apparent reason for loving Matt so much was that he loved her and didn't hit her. This whole event completely blindsided me, and didn't feel like it fit in with everything else happening in the book. Syl as a character felt EXTREMELY flat. Matt turned flat the moment he brought her home.

And then Miranda's dad showed back up, with a LOT of new people in tow. Two of these were Julie and Alex Morales. We barely got to see Julie at all in this book; she spent all her time hanging out with Miranda's little brother Jon. This was really disappointing for me, since I'd grown to love her in the second book in the series. I honestly felt that she and Miranda could have talked about a lot; they had both been spoiled before the moon incident, and had both gone through and grown quite a lot. But we didn't get to see that, because of the bizarre and jilted romances that the author was trying to push onto Julie and Jon, Alex and Miranda, and Syl and Matt. It was like that scene in Bambi where spring comes along and each character along the line peels off, trailing after a new romantic interest that popped in out of nowhere.

The book only got worse from here. Miranda and Alex started... dating? I guess you'd call it? But they had absolutely no chemistry, and I had a hard time even following what was going on in their scenes together. It was tonally flat, and all of the characters became extremely flat in order to make room for Love with a capital L. Alex seemed a bit like his usual self, but only because of how serious he was about protecting Julie. Everyone else was flat, and Miranda went on for pages and pages about how in love she was with Alex. This seemed completely out of character, especially upon comparison with how she was in the previous book. She's never seemed down-to-earth, necessarily, but she didn't seem like the type to spout about how in love she was after a few weeks with one very sullen, secretive dude.

And oh god, they mentioned all the girls having babies so many times I could barf. I thought society was past relegating women to being babymaking machines, but I guess the author wanted to return to that with the end of the world.

I was equally unhappy with the ending; it felt entirely like a "Ooh, gotcha! All their carefully-made plans are ruined now!" Only it was entirely predictable, boring, and frustrating. Julie deserved better. I don't even care about anyone else besides the mom by this point, because they were all so flat and boring through the entirety of this book.

So, in summary

The first half of the book was fine, jived well with the ending of the first book, and still felt very grounded. About halfway through, more characters start popping in, and that's when the writing takes a nosedive. The storytelling felt EXTREMELY preachy this time around, which is not what I was looking for in this series. The plot feels scattered and unpolished, and the tone takes such a weird turn that you're going to get whiplash. It seemed as though there were simply too many characters for the author to handle; everyone flattened out drastically once more characters popped in. The ending is as disappointing and over-the-top as the rest of the book. Don't waste your money; just stick to the first two books in the series.
I recently learned of the upcoming release of The Shade of the Moon, and since I loved the first two books in the trilogy, I've already pre-ordered it. I was inspired to go back and re-read the first three in anticipation, and now it's fresh in my mind why this installment was such a let down. Spoilers follow...

Miranda and Alex - No. Just completely unbelievable. No chemistry between them whatsoever. I realize that they are the only unrelated teens of the opposite sex that either of them knows, but that wasn't enough to make me believe they could go from barely tolerating each other to being soul mates within the span of a few dozen pages. In this book, we only saw Alex from Miranda's point of view, so he was painted as a surly, antagonistic creep who is just short of abusive towards his younger sister. And I'm even a little on the fence about "just short of..." Really, Alex, you've found the closest thing there is post-meteor to a stable home for Julie, with adults who love her like a daughter and have made it very clear that they want both of you to stay, but you insist on making her trek miles across a country filled with unknown dangers to drop her off with some nuns that were there a year ago - without knowing if they even exist anymore? What would Mami and Papi think?

Then there's Miranda, who seemed to do so much growing up by the end of Life As We Knew It. She's regressed back to her original bratty teenager state. When she and Alex come across a stinking pile of decaying dead bodies (which she purposely led him to in a fit of passive aggressiveness because he wanted to try ransacking some new houses instead of the ones she'd been to before) she tells him that she has friends in that very pile. She's lost friends in the worldwide catastrophe! Alex, who's also lost friends as well as every member of his family except Julie, quite accurately replies, "Everyone has." And Miranda freaks out. How DARE he think about anyone's loss besides hers? She also gets into a snit because Alex never smiles. It never occurs to her that maybe Alex doesn't smile because he isn't happy... that maybe he's experienced pain and loss too.

Oh, but none of this matters after Miranda looks into Alex's eyes a few pages later and sees into his soul. Yeah, seriously. Girlfriend sees into the guy's soul. Sigh.

(And while we're on the subject of Miranda and Alex's house ransacking, they go to houses within a mile or two of Miranda's home. Uh, guys? It's been a YEAR since the meteor hit. You're really just getting around to checking for supplies now?)

My other major annoyance was Miranda's brother Matt. Wow. Did aliens take over his body since the first book? He went from being the voice of reason, holding the family together, to complete selfish jerk within the year since Life As We Knew It. On a fishing trip (by the way, how are there still fish in the river, what with the volcanic ash and all? And why didn't anyone think to go fishing the previous summer?) he falls in lust with some dippy girl who obviously doesn't return his eye popping, tongue slobbering feelings for her but recognizes a free meal ticket when she sees one and brings her home, announcing that this is his new wife. Mom is quite reasonably taken aback, but she has become such a doormat that she agrees to let the girl who (I'm assuming) deflowered her eldest move in with them. On the other hand, when Dad shows up, he immediately declares Dippy Freeloading Flake Girl his new daughter.

But hypocrisy, thy name is Matt. It's apparently perfectly fine to give away a fifth of the household's dwindling food supply in exchange for some good dippy girl lovin', but Matt gets his panties all in a knot when the extended family (who, in Life As We Knew it, dropped off several months worth of food before taking off, as well as, you know, giving Matt life back in the day) returns to town, carrying on to his mother that they can't spare any of their precious supplies. And when Alex finds a stockroom's worth of food and a truck with gas to share with the clan, Matt's way of thanking him is to shriek "MINE! MINE! MINE!" and demand that they send Alex and the others on their merry way without any of the supplies. And while they're at it, why don't they send Miranda away with them? Can't be wasting Dippy Flake Girl's share of the food on his sister, now. Oy vey.

Inconsistent characterizations aside, unlike the previous two books, this just wasn't an interesting story. We've already spent two books watching these folks suffer through extreme weather conditions and scavenge for food. While it was interesting to see the same events from two different perspectives, now we're just seeing the same story again with the same characters. I would have rather had a book that told us about Dad and Lisa's life on the road, and more about how they happened to hook up with Alex and Julie.

From what I've seen of The Shade of the Moon, that looks like it will be a different setting a few years down the road, and it's from a fresh perspective, so I'm holding out hope for a decent follow up to Life As We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone, which were really good reads.
I just finished Life as we Knew It, and was blown away. When I saw there was a follow up, I had to see what happened. I kind of wish I hadn't.

This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer takes place a month after Life as we Knew it. After getting halfway through this book, I realized there was a second book I hadn't read, but didn't feel I needed that book to read this one. Miranda continues to write about how life is after the meteor disaster and the struggle to find food and other necessities. Except it seems like all of the characters have regressed in their maturity. Miranda starts whining about how bad life is again and fights with her mom about ridiculous things. Matt, who may have been my favorite character in the last book, now is completely self centered and can only talk about a girl he's found while fishing. New characters enter the book, but they only add to the whine and dine that is this book.

I was completely underwhelmed by this new entry in this series and hope that this is the last one. Life as we knew it is a wonderful book and can act as a stand alone. I encourage people to see it that way.