Title: This World We Live In
Author: Susan Beth Pfeffer
Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Source: eGalley provided by publisher through NetGalley
Parental Warning: death, criminal activity

“But then I had the worst dream — maybe the worst dream I’ve had in my life.  I was walking to school and everything was normal, the way it had been.  The sun was shining, and I remember how happy I felt seeing the sun again.  I wasn’t sure if everything was back to normal or if none of the bad things had ever happened.  It didn’t matter.  The sun was shining, and I was walking to school.  The closer I got to town, the more people I saw.  Everybody was happy, so I realized the sun had returned.  We were all celebrating because we could see the sun again.”

Summary (from publisher):
It’s been a year since a meteor collided with the moon, catastrophically altering the earth’s climate.  For Miranda Evans, life as she knew it no longer exists.  Her friends and neighbors are dead, the landscape is frozen, and food is increasingly scarce.

The struggle to survive intensifies when Miranda’s father and stepmother arrive with a baby and three strangers in tow.  One of the newcomers is Alex Morales, and as Miranda’s complicated feelings for him turn to love, this plans for his future thwart their relationship.  Then a devastating tornado hits the town of Howell, and Miranda makes a decision that will change their lives forever.

Opinion:
In the last of Pfeffer’s moon series we find ourselves back at Miranda’s house.  She and her family are still struggling to survive as the town that surrounds them finds itself increasingly barren — lower food rations, less people, and little information trickling through the limited channels of communication.  Still, they plow forward grateful for what little they have and excited when the electricity flickers on long enough to allow for laundry.

I have to admit, I was glad to be back “home” with Miranda.  I much preferred book one to book two and was anxiously awaiting revisiting she and her family.  Even more than that I was looking forward to seeing the two worlds of she and Alex collide (no pun intended).  I’m glad to say I wasn’t disappointed in how the lives of the two intersected — it made perfect sense to me how Alex’s presence in Miranda’s home came to pass.  I also like that we got to see her extended family reappear and join in the fight to survive.

To that end, the dynamics of the interpersonal relationships were written very well.  It was challenging to fall and be in love, it was difficult to maintain privacy and secrecy amongst family members and it was not easy to be selfish or make genuine attempts at individuality under their current circumstances.   A person was rarely, if ever, alone.  About the only part of the way interpersonal relationships played out that struck me as odd was how quickly the Matt/Syl and Alex/Miranda relationships progressed.  The reader found each couple in love at the speed of light.  Granted, catastrophic events hasten timelines but even still, given how we’d painstakingly watched each and every moment of every other element of the story go by in agonizing detail it was odd to see one of the more significant aspects zip right by.

One of the things I admire most about Pfeffer and this series is that she was not afraid to show the untenable circumstances and situations that accompany this type of catastrophe.  A good portion of this series was not light-hearted yet she maintained an air of hopefulness that encouraged characters to plod through it all. Their purpose was to survive in the hopes that one day it would all take a turn for the better.  Small victories were won and great tragedies were endured but through it all there was always love and hope.