Category Archives: 2-star

March 30, 2013 · 2:30 am

The Return Man by V.M. Zito

v.m. zito

 

Well… I’m glad I got this from the library.

The Return Man has been on my radar for a long while now. I remember seeing the author featured in some article online, and then reading about this book and thinking it sounded like a cool idea. It got good reviews on Amazon, and I was tempted several times to buy it around Christmas but didn’t. Finally I got it from the library and I was really looking forward to it.

This is about Henry Marco, AKA “The Return Man”. When the zombie apocalypse hit, the Western U.S. was evacuated and left to the walking dead. Marco stayed, and is hired by survivors in the Safe States to track down their undead loved ones and put them at peace. But now Homeland Security has heard about him, and insist in his cooperation by taking a job that will bring him to California – back to his past, and back to where the zombie outbreak began.

I felt pretty “meh” the whole way through the book. I was entertained enough to keep reading I suppose, but I have the sense that I could have put it down at any point and not particularly cared if I came back to it or not. It takes a LONG time to start to connect to Marco, because you don’t really learn much about him until near the end. There’s one other main character, Wu, and he was bland as well.

I should mention some of the good points of the novel. There’s an overarching theme about grief in all its different forms, and the effect it can have on a person’s state of mind. Seeing Marco grieve for the loved ones he’s lost was a little touching, and it was interesting to see how he and a few other survivors deal with that. There’s also a slightly different twist on zombie lore, and it’s that emotional memories linger slightly in the zombie brain, leading zombies to wander to places that meant a lot to them when they were alive. Not with any intent or purpose, just a weird trick of the human brain that I thought was interesting.

Now for some of the complaints about the storyline itself… for instance, it’s said that Americans evacuated to the east, now called the Safe States, where the Mississippi River helps provide a defendable border. But at another part in the novel, Marco mentions that since walkers don’t breathe, they can walk underwater. Soooo… why does the river help as a defense against the zombies then? There were a couple little issues like that here and there. Also, Marco has apparently been a zombie-killer for hire for about four years but he seems to have a really hard time just taking down a single loner zombie without  having to struggle for his life. It got frustrating.

 I guess this book just wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. I like the unique approach the author took for a topic that’s dangerously close to being overdone, but it didn’t quite work for me.

Sarah Says: 2.5 stars 

 

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January 10, 2013 · 9:00 am

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Between Shades of Gray book review

This is going to be short. My entire review could just be “ehh”, but that’s not very entertaining. Or informative.

Basically Soviets take over Lithuania and this girl and her little brother and her mom get shoved into a train and taken to Siberia. They’re forced to do lots of manual labor and it’s freezing and they’re starving and things over all just suck. Oh and she’s good at drawing. The end.

See, THIS is why I don’t read books that get a lot of hype. Because EVERY REVIEW I SEE goes on and on about how a book is so fantastic, and then I read it and it’s so not even close to fantastic. I read the book quickly, in one afternoon. The situation of the characters sucked, but it didn’t really move me or make me feel all the emotions that other reviewers apparently felt. Honestly, I’ve read much better books about fictional characters suffering during World War 2. Between Shades of Gray was kind of boring, with very little plot, and I was happy that it was over. SNORE.

I’ve had this book on my shelf for at least a year now, so at least now I can get rid of it without feeling guilty for not reading it.

Sarah Says: 1.5 stars

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November 3, 2012 · 9:53 am

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

 

I think I finished this book about a week ago… that might be the longest I’ve ever really gone in waiting to review a book. I’ve been busy, but I think it’s also because I could probably sum up all of my feelings about this book in one word:

Ehh.

So, Bernadette is a really intelligent wife and mother who can’t stand people, so much so that she hires a personal assistant from an outsourcing company in India to do basically everything for her. But when her teenage daughter Bee asks to go on a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for doing good in school, she can’t say no – but this means she’ll have to leave her home and actually spend time around people.

On top of the anxiety of this upcoming trip, her clash with the neighborhood super-moms escalates to a huge scandal about blackberry bushes, her running over someone’s foot, and a big ill-placed sign and eventually Bernadette just cannot deal anymore – she disappears. And it leaves her husband, police officers, a psychiatrist, and her daughter all asking “where Bernadette went”.

This novel is really written in the form of emails, newspaper clippings, and eyewitness accounts as Bee tries to put together the pieces and figure out just what caused her Mom to disappear and where she might be. I actually liked the style, it worked pretty well (and that’s a hard thing to pull off). But the story was overall just really odd and outlandish. I read this book in about a day, but not because it was that good… it was more like how you just can’t look away from a car accident. You want to see how bad it is and what happens. But none of the characters was particularly endearing, except for maybe Bee. And everything was just so… weird. And you kind of want to slap everyone.

So yeah. There’s been a lot of buzz about this book, but I don’t get it.

 

Sarah Says: 2 stars

 

 

 

 

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October 17, 2012 · 12:55 pm

How to Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran

How to Be a Woman

 

 

I’m just gonna throw this out there - I didn’t love this book*. In fact, I had some issues with a lot of it. So if that might upset you, then please feel free to skip this whole thing. Also, I’m not really going to call “spoilers” for anything in this book, because it’s a memoir/feminist issues kind of book, so there’s not really “spoilers”, you know?

Caitlin Moran says that if you have a have a vagina and want to be in control of it, then you’re a feminist. And that’s a cool definition, one I can totally get behind… except that most of the rest of this book is the reason why I don’t like saying that I’m a feminist.

So, the book kind of follows Caitlin as she grows up and encounters various growing-up issues that females run across. We start of with periods, body hair, boobs – all the stuff that has to do with puberty, basically. From there she discusses weight issues, running into sexism, love, marriage, strip clubs, kids, abortion – all the more adult stuff. And all the chapters usually tie into the feminist issues that go along with those topics. Even when there’s nothing feminist about that topic…

I’m trying really hard right now not to vent about all of my little issues with this book. (It helps that I already went over them all, practically chapter by chapter, with my boyfriend while I was reading it. I ranted a lot.) Soooo… let’s just do this in a clearcut fashion then, huh?

Here are the things I liked:

  • The chapter about abortion. Probably the best written chapter in the book.
  • The part where she talks about weddings, and how it’s insane that people spend SO MUCH MONEY just on one day when that money could be used for so many better things.
  • Her saying that she’s all for pornography (her issue is with the porn industry, I guess, but not porn itself.)
  • Her actual definition of feminism.

Here are some things I didn’t like:

  • That she tries to turn things like body hair, underwear, shopping, and more into feminist issues. They’re not, really. And that she basically blames men for pressuring women to conform and that’s why we get Brazilians or wear thongs. (I promise, 90% of men could care less about these things. If all women decided next week to not wax down there and we went back to granny panties, there would be no uproar from most of the men.)
  • That at her first job she went around making out with the whole office, but then was all “That’s sexism!” when some guy asked her to sit on his lap. Sure, it was inappropriate and screwed up… but honestly what did you expect?
  • That she glorifies Lady Gaga as a feminist. Just… ugh.
  • That this is a “how to be a woman book”, but near the end she goes and spends a ton of money on a designer purse because of what she sees in a magazine. The fact that she’s in her 30′s and worrying that she’s not a “normal woman” because of what she reads in a magazine says more about her insecurity issues than anything else.
  • That in the chapter “Why You Should Have Children” chapter, she says that anything else in life you might enjoy - champagne, Paris, etc. – is just a consolation prize because you don’t have a kid.
  • That she rails against the porn industry because they cater so much to men, and that there should be more porn aimed towards women. This is not a feminist or sexist issue – there’s a reason that they cater to men – it’s called supply and demand. Men buy a whole ton more porn than women do.

If this had been just a regular memoir and not titled “How to Be a Woman” and not promoted as a feminist book, I might have enjoyed it more. But this is in fact, how NOT to go about being a woman (If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already figured it out. This book is not geared towards teens) and how not to be a feminist, either. Caitlin Moran has actually made me realize why I don’t like the word “feminism” – she tries to blame men for things that they really have no control over and aren’t forcing women to do. She hardly mentions actual problems, like pay inequality, sexual harassment, how rape is prosecuted around the world, etc. She says that women should be allowed to do whatever they want, but then criticizes strippers. She goes all “fuck the patriarchy”, but I don’t see her running for any government office, either. From now on, maybe I’ll just say that I support women’s rights, or equality for women, rather than use the F word. At the very least, Moran did me a favor by helping me to see exactly what irks me about that word.

Sooo… this was an interesting book. There were a few laughs. She made a couple good points. But I have a lot of post-it notes spread throughout my library copy, in which I’m arguing with her. Overall, it was frustrating.

You want to know how to be a woman? Don’t give a crap what anyone else thinks and do what YOU want.

 

Sarah Says: 2 stars

 

*PS Laura don’t hate me!

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September 5, 2012 · 5:00 am

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

John Green

 

John Green. So far, I have such a love/hate relationship with him. Will Grayson, Will Grayson was a pretty great book and he co-authored that. An Abundance of Katherines was my first full John Green book, and it leaves a lot to be desired.

So basically there’s a teenage washed-up child prodigy named Colin Singleton, who keeps falling in love with and getting dumped by girls named Katherine, 19 times to be exact. To get him out of the depression of his latest break-up, his friend Hassan convinces him to go on a road trip. While on the road, Colin tries to perfect his “big” discovery, The Theorum of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes can be used to predict how all relationships will end and earn him the genius spotlight he’s been craving.

So here’s my issue – despite witty and often great writing, this book just TRIES TOO HARD. It tries too hard to be hip, nerdy, and teenage-y. There is barely a story here, and the story that is there is pretty implausible. I won’t go into too many details because I don’t want to be spoiler-y, but for real, lamest road trip and Eureka moment ever.

Colin is often whiny and kind of an asshole, though a slight part of me forgives that because of his genius-ness, and I like really smart assholes (House, anyone?). He was DEFINITELY too emo and dramatic. Hassan was pretty awesome, and I was happy to see a teen that’s a practicing Muslim in a book. Overall Hassan was pretty great, he was the best character. Lindsey is a girl they meet on their road trip and she was a cool girl, but also a little too angsty and she lacked some basic common sense.

Also, the every time the characters should be saying “fuck”, they say “fug”. Like “mother-fugger”. It’s explained in the book, but my god it made me want to tear my hair out in annoyance.

The book reads quickly, but the best part of it is the random nerdy fact-dropping and anagramming via Colin. Damn you John Green, for luring me in with your cheap smarty-pants tricks. The writing is pretty good, but I feel like he’s trying to manipulate me with his teenage drama bullshit and exagerrated quirky-ness. Like everything is supposed to be so eye-opening and epic, but really I kind of want to slap these kids and tell them to man up.

I’ll probably try another John Green book again, but it’s going to be a while.

 

Sarah Says: 2 stars

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July 31, 2012 · 6:00 am

The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern

The Book of Tomorrow, Cecelia Ahern

Even though I hear such good things about Cecelia Ahern, and even though I actually own some of her books, and even though I’ve seen P.S. I Love You and really enjoyed it… The Book of Tomorrow is the first novel of hers I’ve ever read! I guess I was looking for a kick in the pants to finally read one, so I am extremely pleased I got to be part of the TLC Book Tour for The Book of Tomorrow!*

Here’s the synopsis of the book from the TLC website:

Raised in the lap of luxury, spoiled and tempestuous sixteen-year-old Tamara Goodwin has never had to think about tomorrow. But when her world is irrevocably shaken by her father’s self-imposed death, she and her mother are left drowning in debt and forced to move in with Tamara’s peculiar aunt and uncle in a tiny countryside village.

Lonely and bored, Tamara’s sole diversion is a traveling library. There she finds a large leather-bound book with a gold clasp and padlock, but no author name or title. Intrigued, she pries open the lock, and what she finds takes her breath away—for what’s written inside is not only impossible and magical . . . it’s her future.

 

I was looking forward to The Book of Tomorrow a lot for the magical realism element – a book that tells the reader what will happen to her the next day? Awesome! Sadly, this didn’t really come into play until almost 100 pages into the book, so the beginning was a bit slow. You get to know Tamara pretty well – she’s spoiled, immature, and really a horrible teenage girl. I know that she deserved some sympathy for her father’s death and for her whole lifestyle being ripped away from her… but I kind of thought that she deserved it. Younger readers (I’m 25, so I suppose by that I mean teenage readers) might find Tamara more likable, but I did not.

It’s really hard to keep me engaged when I dislike the main character, but luckily the mystery of this book was enough to keep me reading and I finished the book in only two days. Tamara’s aunt and uncle are really strange and seem to be obviously hiding something, and she’s having trouble getting through to her mom. When everything was finally revealed at the end, I was happy to finally learn the big secret but I still felt like there was something I wasn’t getting. Mostly I was like “Well that was weird” and shut the book and didn’t really think about it after that.

I get the feeling that this is a “miss” for an otherwise really good and popular author. While I don’t think I’d recommend this book to others, I’m actually looking forward to reading more of Cecelia Ahern’s books because I still feel like I would enjoy them and that this one was just a fluke. Maybe I’ll try P.S. I Love You next, seeing as how I saw the movie and enjoyed the basic storyline.

Sarah Says: 2 stars

About the author:

Cecelia Ahern

At twenty-one, Cecelia Ahern wrote her first novel, P.S. I Love You, which became an international bestseller and was adapted into a major motion picture starring Hilary Swank. Her successive novels—Love, Rosie; If You Could See Me Now; There’s No Place Like Here; Thanks for the Memories; The Gift; and The Time of My Life—were also international bestsellers, published in forty-six countries and selling more than 15 million copies collectively. The daughter of Ireland’s former prime minister, Ahern lives in Dublin, Ireland.

Visit her website here.

The Book of Tomorrow is already out, so you can visit your favorite bookstore or online retailer to purchase!

The tour is far from over! Please visit some of the other stops to see more reviews:

Tuesday, July 24th: The Lost Entwife

Wednesday, July 25th: I Read. Do You?

Thursday, July 26th: Kristina’s Favorites

Monday, July 30th: Twisting the Lens

Tuesday, July 31st: Sarah Says Read

Wednesday, August 1st: Why Girls Are Weird

Thursday, August 2nd: A Novel Source

Monday, August 6th: Drey’s Library

Wednesday, August 8th: A Chick Who Reads

Friday, August 10th: Just Joanna

Saturday, August 11th: Doing Dewey

Date TBD: My Bookshelf

 

And thank you SO MUCH to TLC Book Tours for letting me a part of this tour!

~Sarah

 

*I was given this book in exchange for an honest review, and I receive no compensation of any sort.

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July 26, 2012 · 9:21 am

Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer

Well this was a bit of a letdown. Robert J. Sawyer is the author of the Neanderthal Parallax books I love so much, and I was really looking forward to reading more of his books. Flashforward is one of his novels, and was also the basis for the TV series that appeared in 2009 but was cancelled after 2010. I didn’t let that bother me going into the book, because a TON of good shows have gotten cancelled way too early (Terra Nova, Pushing Daisies, Firefly…).

Flashforward starts with a really interesting concept – suddenly all seven billion people on the planet lose consciousness for two minutes and 17 seconds – millions of people die as cars crash and people fall down wherever they are. But within those 137 seconds, everyone got a glimpse of what their future would be like in a couple of decades and now the race is on to try to figure out just what that means before it destroys the present.

Very cool premise, right? It was cool to see what the characters saw in their futures and how pieces of everyone’s visions started to come together. And honestly, I think I would have really enjoyed this book if the characters had been different. The main character is Lloyd Simcoe, a physicist working at CERN with the Large Hadron Collider. He was kind of a close-minded jerk, at least after seeing his glimpse of the future. He was constantly trying to be very righteous, even when it made no sense. He also has some opinions regarding quantum physics and the multiverse theory that I disagree with – of course this book was written in 1999, so maybe his opinions are supposed to reflect the popular opinion in physics then. But I’ve already studied some of that myself, so when he was being absolutely stubborn and insisting that no matter what, HE was right – I kind of wanted to punch him.

Also, there were a lot of little snide anti-U.S. remarks in the book. Now, I don’t think the U.S. is perfect by any means and given the chance, I’d love to go visit Canada or Europe. A lot of the main characters in the book was Canadian, Greek, French, etc… and Robert J. Sawyer himself is Canadian. And like I said, there was a lot of “the U.S. sucks” kind of stuff being said and normally that doesn’t bother me, but it was a lot and really blatant and got really annoying. For instance:

“He was born in Canada. And Canadians didn’t like guns, either – they had no Second Amendment, or whatever damned thing it was that made Americans think they could go around armed.”

Asshole. I understand that this is somewhat of a hot topic right now due to that horrible shooting in Colorado, but I absolutely support the right to bear arms - especially since I’m a female. There were also some snide remarks about the U.S. having a crappy infant mortality rate (which we do, but again, it was said in an asshole way) and a couple other instances. Eventually, the American-bashing got old and I got sick of seeing SO MUCH of the author’s politics and feelings making an appearance, particularly when it really added nothing of relevance to the story.

Anyways, I suppose my main problem with this book was that I disagreed with the main characters on everything. And again, I’m a big girl and I can take a difference of opinion, but it’s that these characters were so freaking stubborn and jerky about it. It just really got in the way of the actual story. I’m still going to try some of the author’s other books (I have Calculating God on my shelf), but this was a disappointment.

I do kind of still want to watch the one season of Flashforward the show, though from what I read on Wikipedia it’s very different from the book. But maybe that will be a good thing.

 

Sarah Says: 2 stars

 

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May 29, 2012 · 7:00 am

American Gods by Neil Gaiman – FINAL READALONG POST

American Gods readalong

Alrighty, finished the book = lots to talk about!

The old gods agree to meet the new gods in a neutral place to give them Wednesday’s body, and surprisingly that goes okay. At the same time, Wednesday discovers that his old friend Low-Key is actually Loki (man how did I not see that a mile away???) and he’s working for the old/bad gods and you know that sucks.

Shadow decides that he needs to keep his agreement with Wednesday about keeping vigil because he died, and which apparently in godspeak means you get tied to a tree for 9 days with no food… obviously that didn’t work out so hot for Shadow, but he feels all happy that he did such a major thing and he really feels alive, and then of course he dies and goes through the underworld and of course he doesn’t stay dead for along… that whole thing was really predictable, at least to me. Can’t have the protagonist dying off with 60 pages left to go. Oh and Shadow finds out that Wednesday is his daddy. I figured they had some sort of tie, because otherwise Wednesday wouldn’t have hounded Shadow so hard and wouldn’t have really needed him, but still a cool revelation.

So Shadow then comes back to life and discovers that this whole this was a two-man con between Loki & Wednesday to have a bunch of gods kill each other in a major battle so that they would become strong again (and in Wednesday’s case, alive again). And while it was a dick move… I don’t think I necessarily like Wednesday any less. I mean it’s screwed up to try to sacrifice all of your god-friends just so that you get a power boost, but the meaner, more evil side of me just kind of shrugs and says “Gotta do what ya gotta do.”

Laura did some good stuff, but I still hate her and I’m happy with how her little story ended. And I KNEW something was up with Mr. Hinzelmann!!! I knew it! Gross old bastard. As for the ending… I don’t know. Kinda bummed that Wednesday didn’t come back, but technically the real Odin is still alive, which is weird. Gaiman’s whole mythology is just weird.

So… this book was interesting, but honestly without the readalong I might have DNF-ed it again. While I kind of liked Shadow and Wednesday, I just didn’t care overall. I would have liked more focus on the gods – more info on how they came about, how the new ones were created, what the implications of the old and new gods on society are, if there are any. Seems like there was so much more to explore there. The writing didn’t hook me in, with the exception of Sam’s speech earlier. Part of me just feels like Neil Gaiman was trying way too hard with this one. Maybe I’ll like his kids books better. The ending seemed to leave the possibility of a sequel open and if there is one, I probably won’t read it.

I do want to say a major thanks to Jenn for hosting this! Maybe she’ll even consider hosting a readalong for The Graveyard Book or something….hmmmmm…   :-)

Sarah Says: 2.5 stars, overall.

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May 21, 2012 · 8:00 am

Why Does E=Mc2? (and why should we care?) by Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw

Why Does E=Mc2

 

Mannn this book. We had some issues.

So, as ya’ll may have noticed I’ve been on a bit of a physics / quantum / science reading kick. I picked this up at the bookstore because I really didn’t know quite what E=mc2 (that’s squared by the way, I don’t know how to get the 2 to be higher up) meant, and because it got pretty favorable reviews online for being easy to understand. The LIES Amazon reviewers tell!

Me and this book just didn’t get along. Maybe it’s because I’ve read a couple physics-ish books already, but I didn’t like the tone of this book – I felt like the authors were talking down to me. In their effort to make everything easy to understand, they came up with like a thousand analogies that honestly sometimes didn’t make any sense to me. And for claiming that this book would be light on math, basically the whole thing was explaining mathematical equations. WITH VARIABLES. My god I hate variables, they were confusing in middle school and they confuse me now. Especially when 90% of the bajillion equations in this book were made up of random variables, and since they wrote the mathematical stuff out in paragraphs it was even more confusing. I get that E=Mc2 instelf is a variable equation, but there were just too many other ones that didn not seem very entry level to me. Plus, even over halfway into the book, the authors kept apologizing to the math-smart people for going too slowly, and apologizing to the non-math-smart people for including so much math. And they kept calling it “maths”. Grrrrrrr….

Also, DUDE they went off on tangents, usually about the people / history behind important revelations or equations. And that’s cool and the information was interesting, but seriously they’d start to explain some part of an equation, go off on a tangent for a page and a half, and then come back to the equation and it was frustrating.

Anyways, maybe it’s just me, but I’m either too dumb or too smart for this book. After reading a lot about Einstein’s special theory of relativity and exactly what his famous e=mc2 thing meant in this book, I was still kind of lost. So I went online and guess what I found? This Einstein Online website, which explained everything pretty clearly and in SO many fewer words.

Now, I did learn a couple of things from this book, so it wasn’t all bad. Most noticeably I learned what the importance of the work physicists at the Large Hadron Collider are working on, I learned a bit about how to think in the 4-dimensions of spacetime, etc. I learned what the basic differences between Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity are. Reading this book made me wish that I had explored physics in college – I was never a math & science type, so I kind of avoided it and took earth science when I had to. The other night I went online and looked at the physics courses at my local community college, but since I don’t actually want a job in physics it seems pointless. I just like to learn, but not enough to pay $400 plus the cost of books for one course. Maybe if I ever go back for a library science degree (when I’m like 50 and bored), I’ll take some physics electives. Or if I win the lottery. If I win the lottery, I’ll totally quit my job and in a year or two go back to college, just because I enjoy learning. In the meantime, I’m going to read up on that Einstein website and look for some physics / quantum books for self-study.

Anyways, if you’re looking for an intro to Einstein’s theories of relativity, I’d skip this book. Or at least save it until after you already have some real background on the topics.

 

Sarah Says: 2 stars

 

P.S. Sorry to those Brian Cox fans. I never heard of him before this book but I understand he’s quite popular overseas. I’m not blaming my dislike of the book on him necessarily (there ARE two authors), and I’ll have to check out some of his television stuff before I make a real judgement on him.

 

 

 

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May 17, 2012 · 3:04 pm

The Dead and The Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer

The Dead and The Gone

 

The Dead and The Gone is the second book in Susan Beth Pfeffer’s “The Last Survivors” series. I devoured the first book (Life As We Knew It) and really enjoyed the catastrophic world that Pfeffer creates with the idea that an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth and completely screws our world up.

This takes place at the same time as the first book, but it centers around a 17-year-old boy named Alex Morales in New York City. The first book constantly mentioned how things were SO much worse in major cities, especially NYC, so I was really looking forward to a darker, grittier book. I was really disappointed. Alex starts off in a pretty bad situation – both of his parents are missing at the time the moon in knocked closer to Earth, and NYC is in an uproar. Most of the island was flooded, and there’s tales of panic in the streets. But besides trying to take care of his younger sisters, Alex has it okay. The area that he lives in isn’t flooded, and he’s able to get a bunch of food from his uncle’s store. He catches a lot of lucky breaks. Some real bad stuff does eventually happen, but it’s all cushioned with Alex’s devoutness.

I totally get and appreciate that there are millions of people out there who are religious and look to that for comfort in times of crisis. But where Pfeffer could have written a fascinating, gritty account of NYC in total chaos, she made is all seem nice and glossed over with the excess of religion. This is the most pious trio of siblings I’ve ever read about, and it seemed kind of fake. Even the priest in the book told Alex to stop trying to be a saint. Alex had to do some tough things eventually, such as loot from dead bodies. You’d expect a character to feel some sort of way about that and go through a bit of a moral dilemma, but Alex reassured himself that God would want him to do it to survive, and goes to confession later. He used religion to basically gloss over that moral dilemma. It was such a copout. And that’s what basically the whole book was – religion helping to avoid the really tough and scary things that were happening.

And besides the religion stealing the show, little things just bothered me. In the first book they made a point of saying how the major coastal cities were so much worse off than those inland, but it seemed like food and supplies came to Alex and other NY-ers pretty easily. Way easier than inland PA, where the first book took place. Also, the fact that the main characters in this series flinch from guns in these books is a little ridiculous. Come on, the last decade or so has been overrun with zombie / post-apocalyptic movies and books, all teenagers know that weapons are a good idea in these types of situations. Even the saintly teens.

ANYWAYS. Big long rant over. I was really disappointed in the route Pfeffer took in The Dead and The Gone. But for all of that, I’m still going to read the third book (This World We Live In) because I already bought it and feel like I mind as well finish it off. In the next book, Alex somehow meets up with Miranda from the first book, and I’m still really curious to see what happens there.

 I was just hoping for something more realistic with this one, I guess. I hope This World We Live In redeems the series a little for me.

Sarah Says: 2 stars

 

 

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