The Dead and the Gone

Good book for todays teen with everything. I would reccomend this for the spoiled child. This book gives today's youth a different perspective regarding life without the little conveniences and what it would take just to survive.

Hopefully, the books theme would enlighten the young person as to how lucky they are with family, clothing and a full stomach.

Even though this book was written for young adults, I thoroughly enjoyed it. You meet every character in the story and encounter all of their struggles to survive on the earth. The earth was hit with many disasters because the moon was hit out of its orbit by an asteroid. I recommend reading all three books in this trilogy.

I was hoping for a continuation of the first book, but I was not disappointed. An interesting change from the first book, into a religious, Hispanic family. I finished this in less than a day,although not as rivoting as the first. Interest read would recommend.

"Life as we knew it" was so thoughtful and interesting I wanted to explore more with the author on this same theme. This particular book had a lot of holes that made it hard to engage in the story and really wasn't about the same thing. It's almost like the author was asked to write a sequel and complied but her heart was really in telling another story, perhaps one about faith.

That said, I did feel compelled to read it to the end though I was mad at myself for buying it in hardback.

The book was interesting - a companion novel to a book I read years ago. I think I preferred the first book, but this one was certainly similar. The product arrived on time and was in good condition.

The sci-fi aspects of this book are interesting and the ramifications raise many valid avenues for discussion. What is not believeable are the religous aspects of the teen involved. Has the author met an American teenager recently? All of the teens I know are brighter, tougher, and much more pragmatic than the characters presented in this book. Okay, they still love their drama and don't always make great decisions, but they aren't dropping to their knees to pray over every problem they face. Anyone giving this book a 5 star rating is either working for the publisher or is a member of the authors family. NO TEEN would ever rate this book above 2 stars!

Rating: 5/5

Genre: YA Dystopian/Post Apocalyptic

Recommended Age: 16+ (gore, disaster, death, trigger warning for sexual and physical assault)

Pages: 308

Author Website

the store Link

Disclaimer: None, I bought my own copy!

Synopsis: Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event—an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales. When Alex's parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland, and food and aid dwindle.
With haunting themes of family, faith, personal change, and courage, this powerful novel explores how a young man takes on unimaginable responsibilities.

While the first book in this series took place from the viewpoint of Miranda, in this book we’re introduced to Alex who also has to make hard decisions, especially in the wake of great family tragedy. The story takes place in New York, which we were told in the first book was massively devastated when the moon was knocked closer to Earth. The book is not so much a sequel to the first book, but more of a companion as it takes place at the same time as the events in the first book. I thought the characters were wonderfully well developed, even down to some of the minute side characters. The plot development and pacing were so well done. I finished the book in a matter of days and I craved more from the book. You can tell the author is also a master at words as she was able to make the book, in the same format as the first, sound so much different but still entertaining at the same time.

The only thing I felt was weird was that while the book was still in diary format, the book was not. Alex didn’t journal and the book was from third person perspective, but the diary format in the first book was from first person perspective. It made the book a little funny to read, but it was great to follow along the days that way. I got used to the format after awhile as it didn’t have any real impact on the writing overall.

Verdict: If you like dystopian/post-apocalyptic books then this is a must-read for you.

The first book of this series, “Life as we Knew it” was excellent and “The Dead and the Gone” (TDAG)… even better!

How this series has not been made into movie or TV show is beyond my comprehension!

This book is a masterpiece! It gets ALL my page-turner check marks :

✓Writing, ✓Theme ✓Plot ✓Characterization and ✓World-building

4.8 stars

The writing and world-building of TDAG are simply amazing! Incredibly realistic and with such attention to detail! Everything that happens is plausible and makes perfect sense.

TDAG is the grueling survival story of Alex, a seventeen years old that finds himself responsible for his two younger sisters when his parents go missing after the asteroid hitting the moon.

The events in TDAG take place parallel to the first book, “Life as we Knew it” but the aftermath of apocalyptic event reaches epic proportions in the crowded New York. As in thousands-of-casualties epic proportion. This scene gave me the chills:

"Stay in line!… The noise was what attacked him first, a cacophony of screams and sobs. He could make out some cursing, some praying; but mostly the noise was just the sound of agony. Then came the smells. unlike anything he’d ever known. A sickening combination of vomit, body odor and rotten meet. The menthol covered the stench slightly but still he gagged and he was glad he hadn’t eaten all morning. He could taste the small as he inhaled the scent of decomposing flesh. It was a scene unlike any Alex could have imagine. He looked up it was Yankee stadium filled with empty sits but if he looked at eye level it was hell. Alex made the sign of the cross and pray for strength. all around the plain field were corpses lying head to toe in neat rows with just space enough for one person to walk between. How many bodies were there? hundreds? thousands?"

As the first book, TDAG shows how all the things that Alex and his family gave for granted are just gone: electricity, heat, hospitals, schools, water, food and safety.

However Susan does a fantastic job creating unique characters and human dynamics for each books showing how people with different cultural backgrounds and religious believes react differently under similar circumstances.

TDAG shows how resilient the human spirit can be as Alex and his sisters are tested in every possible way as well as their more profound believes and values. In a lawless post-apocalyptic New York plague with riots, death and disease, with no heat or food Alex is forced to do things he had never imagine to keep his sisters alive and safe.

This story is edge-of-the- seat thrilling. Approaching the end I was biting my nails and holding my breath in each sentence. And then when things got really really bad… they just got worse! Something happens that is just… too much. Heartbreaking but so expected and fitting under the circumstances.

What is more frightening is that something like this could happen anytime!

This book makes you reexamine your life and makes you wonder about your limits. Are you ready for a test like this? What would we willing to do to survive?

After reading this book, I have one question: what happened? When I finished reading Life as We Knew It, I was desperate to read the next books in the series. Once I started this book, I constantly found myself wondering what happened.

The Dead & the Gone follows Alex and his two sisters fighting for survival in New York City following the asteroid knocking the moon out of it's orbit. Like Miranda in the previous book, the Alex and his sisters struggle with food shortages, no electricity, no communication, and just about everything that goes along with an apocalypse. However, unlike Miranda, Alex and his sisters are alone; they must rely on each other for survival. Throughout the book, Alex is trying to find ways to provide for his sisters and find an escape from the city.

Unlike the first book, this one is not written in journal entries. Further, it is not told from Alex's POV. The author takes a third person limited perspective. The story follows Alex, his thoughts, concerns, and motivations. To me, the impact of the first book was primarily due to POV. I couldn't figure out why Pfeffer decided to take such a huge step back from the main character. In addition, the first book did a good job giving the supporting characters some depth. This book really lacked in that regard. At some level, Alex was fairly one dimensional. His sisters were stock characters, the priests were too stereotypical, and so on. To me, the only character that stood out was Kevin.

From the start, this book was rather stilted. The conversation was too forced, canned, and scripted. Really, if I am too be honest, the whole story was too formulaic. There was nothing that surprised me, I never felt impacted by the events in the book, and didn't feel anything for the characters. Honestly, I could have cared less whether they lived or died.

The ending was extremely anti-climatic. I found myself flipping through the extra material in the book, because I was convinced I had missed something.

This book was extremely disappointing. Life as We Knew It was amazing, well thought out, and brilliant. With this book, I am not sure what happened. At some level, I wonder whether Pfeffer should have just started and finished the series with the first book. After finishing this book, I am very timid about picking up the third book . . . If you're looking for an awesome continuation of Life as We Knew It, be ready for disappointment. Unless the third one really makes up for this book, I would suggest not reading The Dead & the Gone.

I love these books and I'm already looking forward to reading the third book in The Last Survivors trilogy! With their simplicity and sometimes drawn out storylines, these books might not be for everyone. I think that I like them more in that they're different because they aren't constantly action packed. That isn't to say that nothing happens throughout the duration of the novel, but The Dead and the Gone is like Life As We Knew It in that it is more character oriented rather than plot driven.

There's a different element in this book because not only is there a different setting for the disaster, New York City, neither of Alex's parents are there and he's left to care for his two younger sisters. I loved seeing how someone would handle suddenly having this responsibility thrust upon them, not only because it would be difficult in normal circumstances but because things are obviously anything but normal in this world that Susan Beth Pfeffer creates. It's both horrifying and fascinating at the same time.

I definitely enjoyed this second installment more than the first book, though I think part of that might be because there's more mobility throughout the story and the setting is more diverse. That and I like hearing this more from the limited third person point of view rather than having it told like someone's writing it in a journal. It leaves more suspense and made me more interested in the story.

I can't wait to start the next book, especially because characters from each book get to meet each other now!

Pfeffer continues her post-apocolyptic moon series with a stark urban counterpart to the rural setting of the first. The main character, Alex, is a New York City boy with a large family -- two younger sisters, an older brother in the service and parents who work hard. When the moon shifts his family is dispersed enough that Alex assumes temporary responsibility for his sisters. Now suddenly thrust into the role of primary caretaker his life alters considerably from the future he envisioned. In this way I thought the book took advantage of it's greatest strength -- the characters. An ordinary boy his age, with a pizza parlor job, concentrating on school and the future instantly finds himself with a whole different set of responsibilities than envisioned. That drop of a hat shift in his focus overtook and overwhelmed his life.

The other great strength of this book was that Pfeffer showed us the other side of the coin. In book one we got to see a family struggle through this catastrophic event from a place where things were so geographically dispersed. It was extremely difficult to get news or see neighbors or get to provisions because of the distance between homes and town. In this version it was easier to maintain some level of communication even if the information shared wasn't anything that would necessarily help those struggling with the situation.

What struck me as odd, though, is that I was expecting far more chaos in the streets in this version. We got was far more subdued than I had anticipated it would be in such a circumstance. Don't get me wrong there was the typical (and some creepy not so typical) looting and there was rationing and food bank lines that seemed to stretch for days so it wasn't completely out of synch with my overall expectations; but I suppose I had it in my mind things would be a bit more closer to Stephen King's The Stand where there is violence and car burning in the streets. This softer tone didn't ruin anything for me as a reader it was just different.

This book placed a much greater emphasis on religion and faith than its predecessor. Book one did touch lightly on the religious aspect of an apocolyptic event but was surprisingly low key about it. This book, however, felt like it went a bit further to the extreme to make up for it. Not so much so that it was over the top or unrealistic but it was a noticeable change in tone and was a large part of the story as told. The way faith and religion infused within the story allowed for the theme to branch out in several directions across several characters.

There was much realism to the story told. We saw famine resulting in starvation, crime, debilitating illness, family squabbles, love and loss. We even got to see heroism in the face of extenuating circumstances. Above all there was hope to be had. Though not my favorite of the series thus far, if you enjoyed book one you'll likely enjoy book two as well.

This companion volume to "Life As We Knew It" presents a different perspective on the catastrophe described in the first book (the effect on Earth when the moon is knocked out of its orbit). The author skims over the facts of the catastrophe, assuming that the reader has read the first book; this didn't bother me as I'd just read the first one a few weeks ago. Knowledge of the events of the first book actually made the second book more suspenseful, as I kept waiting for the ash cloud and the cold weather and the flu to hit.

I agree with some of the readers that the tsunami described in the first volume as engulfing Manhattan was more muted in this book. It's possible, though, that the rumors and news reports in the first volume were simply overblown. Breakdown of communications in the wake of disaster is one of Pfeffer's themes, so I would accept that explanation.

Unlike many readers, I liked Alex, the hero of this book, much better than Miranda, the heroine of the first one. I found her almost unbearably whiny and spoiled, while he was simply conscientious and shallow. Callow? Pfeffer may have tried too hard to make his family Puerto Rican, but I think she got centrality of their Catholic identity just right. There are lots more people like that (or very born-again, or very Jewish) than like elitist Miranda, who is horrified at pasta sauce that's not made from scratch.

As in the first book, I wondered at a few technical details. How come Alex's father was the building super but didn't have a passkey? Was it in his pocket when he left for Puerto Rico? How come the water supply and gas lines to their building lasted so long, despite floods, earthquakes, and clogging ash? How did Kevin, who is after all just another schoolboy, know Harvey, the fence? (I guess Kevin's father did a lot of black market trucking ..)

Like other readers, I was disappointed that Pfeffer didn't tell us anything about the people Alex had to check up on daily to earn his lunch. That was such an easy opportunity for an author to expand the scope of her story, and Pfeffer missed it entirely! Overall, this story seemed a little rushed and skimpy. So four stars out of five.

The Dead and Gone had two strikes against it before I even began reading. Strike one, I had already read about the events in this book in Life as We Knew It, which focuses on the same astrological events and how they effected those living in the Upper Mid-Eastern part of the country. Strike two was the fact that this book is narrated by a teenage boy, which as a 24 year old female, is hard to relate to. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book immensely.

Alex Morales is 17, living in NYC and on the track to certain success. He is intelligent, honest and hard working. Alex's life is filled with potential and a loving family until one asteroid to the moon knocks it closer to the earth and irrevocably changes life as he knows it. His father, mother, and older brother are gone, and it is up to Alex to find a way for him and his two younger sisters to survive.

It was my initial thought that I would be unaffected by Alex's plight as I had read it all before from Miranda's perspective; however, I couldn't have been more wrong. Turns out surviving famine, disease, weather shifts and an absence of sun is significantly different in NYC than in the Mid-Eastern states. I also think that Alex's tale is significantly more interesting, perhaps due to his significant amount of losses. This book made cry, cringe and appreciate the wonderful gifts my life has presented to me and I am sure others who read this book will feel the same.

How rare is it that a teen thriller is addictively well-written, yet doesn't contain sex, rude language, violent situations or hatred between child and parents?

The Dead and the Gone is a parallel story to Life As We Knew It by the same author (also a good story worth reading). Once I picked it up, I could not put it down. I looked for any excuse to find time to read it.

The situation is this: an asteroid hits the moon and knocks it closer to the earth, recking all sorts of havoc virtually around the world. This is the story about how one teenager, the oldest sibling in the house, copes with the loss of his parents and older brother and does everything he can to get his younger sisters through the crisis.

Although it's not completely realistic, it's near enough to make it exciting. His emotions are honest. The way the family's hope waxes and wanes is honest. The perils, the politics, the place of the church in the disaster are all honest and that's what makes this a book worth reading. It's a book that frightens the bejeebers out of you but leaves you with a desire to continue hoping for the best.

If your teen likes scary stories, this is one book that is terrifying and yet bereft of vampires, long discriptions of blood and gore, unwaranted sex scenes or gratutious violence.

The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
A thrilling sequel to Life as We Knew it that will leave you wanting more after every chapter. In The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer, Pfeffer follows the life of a boy named Alex living in New York City when a disaster strikes. She details how Alex and his family are affected leaving no detail unsaid. This book is now in my top five and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who can handle thought-provoking, occasionally gruesome details.
From the moment I began reading The Dead and the Gone it seems as though I never put it down. My mind and thoughts lingered on every sentence. While some parts of the book were truly gruesome and tragic, the expansiveness of the details of these events allowed me to truly imagine what I would do if I was put in the situations that take place in the book. Even now, weeks after finishing the book my mind wanders back to story.
While this book could be read independently I would like to recommend to anyone planning to read that they first read Life as We Knew it, the first book of the series. The lives of the characters in the first book create a basis to compare the more horrifying conditions of the lives of the characters’ in The Dead and the Gone to.
Never have I encountered a series that I have become so invested in. Pfeffer has created a new type of story-line while still incorporating a post-apocalyptic tone. The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer is not only a story, but an experience and therefore I would strongly recommend this book to anyone willing to encounter the unspeakable details within its pages.

I feel these books really affected me. Maybe it's because it's cold and rainy in NorCal while its usually 72F and sunny but I felt like I was really experiencing this story. I lived in Manhattan in 91st and Broadway and this story is based 4 blocks from there. As the successor of "Life as we knew it" we see the story of a 17-year-old puertorrican guy who becomes the caretaker of his two sisters when their parents disappear after the sequence of disasters that happen when the Moon got knocked over closer to Earth by an asteroid.

Life in the city is very different and cruder than rural Pennsylvania (like in "Life as we knew it"), so Alex and Julie get exposed to things that are terrifying: corpses lying on the street, rats eating the bodies, specially gruesome is the scene where Alex goes to the Yankee Stadium to try to identify his mother's body among a sea of corpses.

It's not a happy story, at all, but I have to keep reading! I have hope something good will happen for them in the next book. And I just found out there's a fourth coming out on Sept 2013.

Aside from the story, I love the idea of parallel books of the same event from different perspectives that could be read individually. I wonder if there's more series like this.

I like this series, I do! Alas, this installment fell a bit flat for me, mainly due to the main character and the setting - two integral parts of any novel. Let's start with Alex. Can we say "pretty boring?" His character just wasn't interesting. I would have much rather read about how his friend Kevin attempted to survive this landscape than him. And then there's New York City, which had SO much potential! We are talking NYC here ... in an apocalypse! The tale of the crumbling of the most populated city in America was underwhelming to say the least. An apocalyptic story set in New York could have been so dynamic! This novel didn't even have a "big city" feel - Alex could have been living in ANY city in the USA. It just didn't feel like New York. Also, with the way New York was described in Pfeffer's first novel, I expected big things to happen ... but much of nothing happened.
All of that aside, I still enjoyed the book as another perspective of one disaster. I like that idea - looking at one dramatic situation through different people's eyes.

I thought this series of four books was really, really well done. I was even thinking of the story and the characters long after I had read the last one. Written in a straightforward way, from different viewpoints, yet leaves room for some twists and turns that are not obvious at all. Some real thought went into this story, and I was very sorry to reach the end. Each book is not "more of the same." Each has it's own focus to further the story line, and it all hangs together. Again, sorry I'm done.

This is the second book in the Last Survivors trilogy. I recently read the first book in the series, Life As We Knew It, and while I finished the book in a state of rather morbid depression, at the same time I couldn't put it down. I had similar expectations of this installment of the series, but unfortunately, I didn't find it as compelling a read.

Alex is a likable enough character. Over the course of the book, Alex is forced to make some hard decisions to care for his remaining family, and sometimes has to do grisly, horrific tasks simply to survive. Through it all, he relies on his devout catholicism to help him keep his strength and wits about him.

One aspect I found particularly jarring, especially in the beginning, is Alex's faith. In the first few chapters I felt I was reading a book on the benefits of catholicism; I don't care to be preached to, and this caused me to get into the book more slowly than I had in Life As We Knew It. Towards the middle of the book, though, the religious parts seemed to taper off, and the ones that were present were more in line with the story and less noticeable.

Of his two sisters, Bri is the calm, sweet one who tries to care for everyone, yet needs the most protection. Julie, the youngest, is the selfish, spoiled baby of the family. I found Julie's development over the course of the tragedy to be the most interesting - she starts out as a terror and trial to Alex, but slowly grows into his biggest ally, someone he can truly depend on.

I'm not sure what to expect of the third book in the series, This World We Live In. I will be reading it because I hate to leave a trilogy unfinished, and I think it will be interesting when the characters from the 1st and 2nd books meet. The series premise itself it puts me in mind of a train wreck: you know it's a disaster, you know it's horrifying, but you just have to look anyway and see what's happened.

If you like light and happy fiction, then this series is probably not for you; however, if you are a fan of science fiction with a twist of gritty realism, you will enjoy it.

I previously wrote a blog post about the first book in the series by Susan Pfeffer. I thought it was wonderful and pulled the reader into the time and was fascinating. I was disappointed in this book. I felt that there was not as much feeling and I struggled to feel sympathy for Alex in the story. I also did not get pulled into what was happening, I never gained the feeling that what was occurring in the tale was also happening in the outside world like I did with the first book. I think a part of the reason this might have happened while I was reading the book is because I never lived in New York, but I have lived in Pennsylvania which is where the first book takes place. I also think this book is written more for boys than for girls, however it is still written in the diary format, similar to the first book. I think if a reader can separate the two books, it would be easy to see them as two unrelated stories. I'd say give this one a try if you've lived in New York, it might pull you in more than it did for me.

Seventeen year old Alex Morales is working at his part-time job,when the unthinkable has happen. The moon has been pushed closer the Earth and with that rising seas, earthquakes and volcano once dead are becoming active again. Overnight Alex, with the lost of his parents, taking care of his under sisters Julie and Briana. Over time the conditions in New York City become hard and everyday is a struggle for Alex and his sisters.
"The Dead and The Gone" is the follow novel by Susan Beth Pfeffer. This time Ms.Pfeffer shows the readers how the struggle in a urban environment can hard than in the country. While it was a decent read, I thought that Diary format didn't not really work for this novel as it did in the first book, "Life As We Knew it." But overall it was a pretty decent read.

Even though I liked the first one in this series, Life As We Knew It, I enjoyed this one even more. In Life, it is written in a diary form, which I didn't really care for. But this book didn't do that and I liked it much better. This book takes the reader to NYC and what happens there when the moon gets all jacked up do to a meteor slamming into it.
I loved Alex's voice in this story. I like that it was from his point of view and how he struggled with taking care of his sisters. There were some scenes that were just awful and the things he went through - I can't imagine...
I really like this series. There is one more out right now that I haven't read yet. It brings characters from the first and second book together. Definitely a good read - if end of the world madness doesn't scare you.