I gave this book four stars as opposed to the five of its predecessor because Alex bugged the crap out of me. It's understandable that he be somewhat stubborn and bossy seeing as both of his parents are gone and he's left to care for his two younger sisters but sometimes he would randomly get angry for seemingly no reason at all. No, correction, he'd get angry at Julie because he didn't like her as much as Bri. Which I didn't see why either, in my opinion Bri was a pain in the ass. All she ever did was pray and rant about how "Mami" and "Papi" would come home and save them. Newsflash Bri, you're 14 and the world is ending, I would think you'd have enough common sense to accept the cold-hard truth of reality..your parents are dead. Alex didn't really do very much either, I mean sure he'd go out and barter items for food and stuff but housechores, and cooking..nah, that's the girls jobs. Or in this case Julie, who seemed to have the most to do all the time with doing all of the house chores and cooking, yet Alex still complained that she was useless and complained too much. Wtf Alex? 
 I know after this complaint rant it seems like I didn't like the book, but I did. The characters were just frustrating and I think I compared them to Miranda's family of the first book who I liked a lot more. One thing I did like about the replay of events in Alex's perspective was that I could really see the differences between life in the country in the first book and how much different the city was. The same events just different circumstances and reactions. I'm looking foreward to seeing what Pfeffer does with the next book, altough I hope it's from Miranda's POV... =)