This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer

I just finished this book last night and got sad enough that I picked up another book to read before I fell asleep (I was afraid I was going to have bad dreams).   This is the third book that Pfeffer has written which has characters dealing with the aftermath of a cataclysmic event: a meteor hitting the moon.   The first book, Life As We Knew It, has a main character named Miranda, who is living out in the country with her mom and brothers.   It's a wonderful book, written through Miranda's diary entries, and really brings home how awful an event like this would be --- and realistically, what might happen if the moon was bumped off balance.  The Dead and the Gone, the second book, has a main character, Alex, who is experiencing the same event, but who is living in New York City.   So, you get a completely different experience of the same event.   In this third book, both characters are brought together, but the story is again told through Miranda's diary entries.

I have read many other bloggers' reviews of this book, and I think some blogs really had interesting things to say.  Since I found my thoughts to be somewhat in line with theirs, and especially in light of the recent postings about plagiarizing book blog entries.....   check out The Compulsive Reader and Dog-Eared and Well-Read.    I think these bloggers not only gave good summaries, but I found I echoed some of their thoughts about the book, as well.

I had been waiting for this book, so in the meantime, I went back and re-read the first book, picked up the second book, and now have thoroughly saturated myself with the story.   I now also look at the moon with a new respect.   Admittedly, I had issues with some things in this last book, mostly the love story between Miranda and Alex, and a few other things (just how did Miranda's little band of people travel so quickly and safely??).   And sometimes, I didn't really like Miranda --- she starts out in the first book as a little sulky, and I figured she would have grown a little more by the third book --- and sometimes, between you and me, I wanted to smack her.    But overall, this was a satisfying read, and worth the wait.