Waiting On Wednesday (2): This World We Live In - Susan Beth Pfeffer

Waiting On Wednesday is a meme hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

Summary from Amazon: 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, his 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.

Fiction about the end of our world really thrills me, and Life As We Knew It is one of my favourite examples. It’s terrifying and yet uplifting, with that this could actually happen fascination that gets me every time. When I first heard that the follow-up, The Dead And The Gone, concerned an entirely different cast of characters, I was a little disappointed. After all, I loved Miranda from the first book. I had been on a journey with her; I had laughed and cried with her and willed her to make it.

Of course, then I read The Dead and The Gone, and I loved Alex and Julie from that book in equal measure. In fact, Alex is one of my favourite teen boy characters from any book ever. He’s the big brother every girl could do with.

Then I discovered on the ’net that Susan Beth Pfeffer was writing a third book in the sequence, entitled This World We Live In. I was wiser this time around. I added it to my wishlist, and looked forward to meeting whatever characters she had in store for us - safe in the knowledge they’d be awesome.

And then I read the summary, and my heart did a happy dance. Miranda and Alex are back... and together... in the same book.

I couldn’t find a final version of the cover online, but you can go here to Susan Beth Pfeffer’s blog to check out a photo she took of it herself. I’ll be waiting till 2010 for this one, but I know it’ll be worth the wait.