PopSugar '15 #38--A book that made you cry ( )

Why was this so boring? WHY? I also realized I have no idea about Canadian geography. Kaelyn is saying "Oh, we have to travel all the way to Toronto," and I'm thinking, "Is that far??"

I have no idea!!

So this book was very, very slow-moving and it made me feel inadequate in my 5th grade geography skills. So thanks a lot, Crewe. ( )

Another great book by Megan Crewe.

Enjoyed this just as much as the 1st book in the Fallen World Trilogy. Can't wait for the final book to come out in paperback :) ( )

I don't use star ratings, so please read my review!

(Description nicked from B&N.com.)

“First, the virus took Kaelyn's friends, then her family, and now it's spread beyond her island. The only thing people know for sure is that no one is safe. But when Kaelyn finds samples of a vaccine hidden in her father's abandoned laboratory, she knows there's only one option: seek out someone who can replicate it. As Kaelyn and her friends head to the mainland, carrying with them hopes for a cure, they face greater challenges than they ever could have imagined. Not everyone they meet wants Kaelyn to succeed-and many simply want her dead and the vaccine for themselves. With the chance of finding help slipping away, will Kaelyn be forced to sacrifice those she loves in order to rescue the human race?”

This book is very different from the first in the series. Instead of the epistolary style used previously, Kaelyn only makes a few journal entries before abandoning it altogether. I found that while I had no problems with the more “normal” writing style, I did miss the journal, because it gave the story a much more personal and immediate feel. The author did keep the narrative to first-person, though, so there is still some of that sense in the story.

Another difference is the setting. Kaelyn and her group leave the island and venture onto the mainland in search of someone who can synthesize the vaccine and hopefully create a cure. In this respect, the story begins to lose some of the uniqueness that initially drew me into the series—there are plenty of novels about a small group of people surviving in a hostile world devastated by disease/war/zombies/etc. However, Crewe’s descriptions of the people that they meet and the places that they discover are well-done and continued to hold my attention.

It’s this choice—moving the action to the broader setting rather than the limited one—that contributes to this book really feeling like a “middle novel”. The first book showed us the effects of the disease, and presumably the final book will show the final push to get a cure and rebuild society. This second book consists of a lot of traveling and short vignettes of what happens on the way (kind of like the random encounters of a role-playing group as they head to the main adventure). While it’s certainly not boring, there’s not a lot of plot advancement happening.

The suspense in this novel is still pretty high. The characters are now encountering strangers, and you never know if they’ll be friendly or hostile, or if they’re sick or healthy. Members of the group are still vulnerable to the virus, and much of the book is spent wondering who will fall ill—or if they will. By the time the story is over, a lot of different problems have occurred and some events have been set up that will have ramifications far into the final novel. The unpredictability of most of the character interactions keeps the tension high and the book’s pace moving briskly along even with the long stretches of traveling place to place.

Although I missed some of what made the first novel unique, The Lives We Lost is nonetheless a suspenseful story that will keep readers turning pages to find out what happens next. I’ll be waiting eagerly for the final book to see how Crewe gets her characters past the many obstacles now facing them.

This review originally appeared on Owlcat Mountain on April 25, 2013.

The Lives We Lost was just as captivating as The Way We Fall. If you haven't read The Way We Fall yet, stop reading this right now and go order a copy of that book first. This isn't a series that I would suggest jumping into in the middle of it. From the moment I read the synopsis of TWWF I knew I wanted to read it. I am fascinated by the spread of deadly viruses and I enjoy reading nonfiction books like The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story and Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues, so I was incredibly interested in reading a YA fiction book with the same topic. This series is much more realistic than many other YA books in this genre because no one turns into a zombie or monster from this disease and it could really happen. Viruses like this have taken hold of the world in the not-so-distant past, which makes these books scarier to me than any fiction horror story.

The Lives We Lost starts off right where TWWF ended. Kaelyn and her handful of friends (and her cousin) from the island that have survived the virus has also torn across the country, and probably the entire world. She finds her dad's key to the research center and discovers a vaccine he was in the process of testing when he was killed. Since there is only one doctor on the island and she is unable to test and duplicate the virus, Kaelyn and her friends decide to leave the island in search of a doctor who can help her replicate the virus. They encounter many horrific situations along the way and the worse it got, the more I found myself cheering them on and hoping that they would find the person that could help them.

Kaelyn is one of my favorite heroines. She is not naturally an outgoing person, but she is caring, selfless, and brave even when she is afraid. I have read so many books with wimpy, whiny female main characters lately so Kaelyn was an absolute breath of fresh air. She has been through so much and never gave up, not when she felt she could possibly help others out.

I waited until The Lives We Lost were out to read The Way We Fall so that I could read straight through to the second book, but now I have to wait almost a year until the third book is out! I am so bummed, I can't wait to read the third installment of this series! I would recommend this series to everyone. :) ( )