Dead and the Gone, the

A companion to Life as We Knew It, The Dead and the Gone tells us what it was like in Manhattan after the moon got knocked out of place and messed up life on Earth.

This time the protagonist is a boy, Alex Sanchez, who finds himself the head of his household. At first I found the Puerto Rican siblings' religiosity annoying and maybe a little fake-seeming, but it stopped bothering me after a while. I did feel like Pfeffer's voice as Alex was more self-conscious than that of others of her narrators. Regardless, Pfeffer's forecast of how a global catastrophe would play out in the big city seems realistic...and creepy.

Although it's a YA book, I'm not sure I'd recommend it to a young teen, as it's pretty bleak.