The Dead And The Gone was very different from the previous book, in both good and bad ways. First, it flipped from a first-person journal-style to a third person narrative. Not bad, but a strange transition and I feel like there wasn’t as much introspection (which would have gone poorly tbh). The setting and narrator were changed from a rural PA girl to a NYC boy. Because of this, readers got to see the effects of the disaster in a different context, as NYC was more organized, but also got more horrific quicker. Both were due to having more people on hand.

Most of the character stage presence was taken up by Alex Morales. On the whole, he was a nice change from Miranda. He was a Catholic school boy with deep faith in God and deeper faith in his eventual run as president. He also played the role of the main caregiver to his two younger sisters, whom he was constantly worried about. He also had anger issues. It wasn’t written into his character like he went to therapy or waa at all aware of it, but his temper got the better of him more than a few times. It never built, though, and just happened with drastic consequences that I feel he never faced. It really irked me how rooted in misogyny they were, too, especially when his outbursts were never treated as wrong or something worth apologising to his sisters over. They made me really not root for Alex.

On the whole, this book wasn't as stressful as the first, but was still gripping. I wish more attention had been paid to other characters, but was mostly okay with the writing of the ones we got. However, while The Dead & The Gone offered a more expansive look at the world post-meteor, the main character had some serious problems with toxic masculinity and the book had an unsatisfying ending which invalidated the Morales’ struggles. It fell vastly short of Life As We Knew It for me.