This series had so much potential. And I feel like this book could have taken it and elevated it to something that would have made it the perfect apocalypse read for anyone interested in the genre. It could have discussed human tragedies and responses, it could have gone into reactions to deep, overwhelming grief. It could have made a point about human survival and tenacity. And yet, it fell flat. Again, the concept of this series is amazing. The moon being knocked closer to the earth, causing catastrophe after catastrophe? Brilliant! But the execution was dull. The first two books were decent. They had their flaws, but continued to move the plot along in a way that made me want to keep reading. This book, on the other hand, made me want to just DNF it. I don't DNF books, but I got really close with this one. For starters, the first third of the book was just a continuation of "I'm Miranda Evans and my life sucks more than everyone else around me even though they're going through the exact same things I am." Frustrating, but I didn't like Miranda much in the first place. There isn't a lot of character growth we see from her until the very end of this book, and it's all contingent on Alex.

But let's talk about Alex really quick. I felt like Alex's identity was just being used as tokenism in the second book, and that became SO abundantly clear that was the intent when reading this installment. There was only one mention of his and Julie's identities - the bodega. That's it. It's incredibly frustrating that a character that could have been so rounded and a nice welcome break from your average middle-class white family reacting to the apocalypse just ended up... like Alex.

Fine. Let's set that aside for a moment and look at Miranda and Alex together. It's absurd to me to think that either one of them would just give up everything for each other. Matt and Syl? Fine. But Miranda and Alex

moving across the country (which at this point might as well be the universe for them)

? Doesn't make sense to me.

One of the most frustrating parts of the book for me was the ending with Julie. Miranda did what she did, and I get like the

"oh, Alex might not come back and it's better for her to die like this than live for a little while longer."

BABE. THAT'S SO ABLEIST. The thought that Julie

living, while paralyzed, is worse than being murdered in her sleep is ridiculous. It might have gone okay had Julie asked, or if she had just gone to sleep and then never woke up (on her own, without Miranda "lending a hand"), but that's not how it went

. Instead, I lost even the slimmest bit of sympathy I once had for our MC when she decided that she was going to

kill the younger sister of the boy she supposedly loves

. If that wasn't enough, I kept remembering the point Miranda makes a huge show of

what if Julie wasn't around? Then she and Alex could be together. And then Julie dies

. It felt like sloppy writing and poor development when it could have been the moment that changed everything.

Very disappointed in what could have been a great book and instead turned out like this. The writing is done well. I like Susan Beth Pfeffer's style. But having to suffer through these characters and the ableism and the complete lack of development made this a very poor read.</p>