This book reminded me of Life As We Knew it, except this was a lot lighter. It ended on a pretty light note too. It was interesting to see how the world running out of oil would turn out. The pace seemed fine, and I didn't get bored while reading it. 
 I feel like the war's effect was very light on them. Yeah, it was depressing and everything, but wouldn't it have a bigger effect on them? It's seems as if the only thing they lost was oil, but they would've lost that anyways. If it wasn't in this book, it wouldn't have made any difference. Even the super hurricane was a bigger deal on their lives than the war. 
 I can't say that I liked everyone's decisions though (view spoiler)[(like the president, and Gwen's idea of telling everyone about the place. And Hector, for telling everyone where Gwen was. Seriously, is he really that stupid? Tom could've easily ratted Gwen out to the police or something.) (hide spoiler)]. 
 Gwen ends up in a situation where she doesn't want to live in foster care, so she runs away, trying to disappear from the authorities. I was hoping to see how Gwen survived out there, but sadly, it never happened. Near the end of the book, what happened to Gwen going into foster care? She seemed so cautious about it at first, and then it seemed that everyone just forgot about it. 
 So she finds an abandoned place - but it's pretty much heaven compared to what everyone else is going through. Wouldn't she have been kicked out for trespassing on private property? And since the word spread about that, anyone could've taken advantage of it (like the authorities, who could've taken it for themselves) and tossed her out. It was really interesting but could've been better.