The Shade of the Moon

By Susan Beth Pfeffer

The eagerly awaited addition to the series begun with the New York Times best-seller Life As We Knew It, in which a meteor knocks the moon off its orbit and the world changes forever.

It's been more than two years since Jon Evans and his family left Pennsylvania, hoping to find a safe place to live, yet Jon remains haunted by the deaths of those he loved. His prowess on a soccer field has guaranteed him a home in a well-protected enclave. But Jon is painfully aware that a missed goal, a careless word, even falling in love, can put his life and the lives of his mother, his sister Miranda, and her husband, Alex, in jeopardy. Can Jon risk doing what is right in a world gone so terribly wrong?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Aug 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9780547813394

Susan Beth Pfeffer

Susan Beth Pfeffer is the author of many books for teens, including the New York Times best-selling novel Life As We Knew It, which was nominated for several state awards, and its companion books, The Dead and the Gone, This World We Live In, and The Shade of the Moon. She lives in Middletown, New York.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Susan Beth Pfeffer

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [e-mail] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Pfeffer, Susan Beth, 1948–

The shade of the moon / Susan Beth Pfeffer.

pages cm

Sequel to: Life as we knew it.

Summary: Jon Evans is one of the lucky ones—until he realizes that escaping his safe haven may be the only way to truly survive.—Provided by publisher.

[1. Natural disasters—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Social classes—Fiction. 4. Family life—Tennessee—Fiction. 5. Tennessee—Fiction. 6. Science fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.P44855Sh 2013

[Fic]—dc23

2012046800

ISBN 978-0-547-81337-0 hardcover

ISBN 978-0-544-33615-5 paperback

eISBN 978-0-547-81339-4

v2.1015

For Miranda and Alex

Their families and their friends

PART ONE

[Image]

Wednesday, April 29

No. Jon. No.

Jon Evans sat upright in his bed. It was Gabe, he told himself. Gabe must have had a bad dream. He listened for Carrie, Gabe’s nanny, to calm the little boy. He waited to hear Lisa run down the hallway to soothe her son.

But Carrie was quiet. Lisa was quiet. The house was quiet.

It wasn’t Gabe he’d heard. It was Julie.

How long had he known her? A month, six weeks. But he’d been haunted by her for two and a half years.

Jon knew better than to believe in ghosts. Billions of people had died in the past few years. There’d be no room for the living if all the dead were ghosts. And if there were ghosts, there were others Jon would prefer to be haunted by. His father, who died of exhaustion and hunger on the way to Sexton, Tennessee. Jon would welcome his ghost.

But it was Julie’s voice he heard in his sleep. Julie who cried out to him in panic, in anger, her accusations too real, her death too unforgivable.

If the moon’s orbit hadn’t been pushed closer to the earth, Jon would never have met Julie. He’d be a senior in high school, living with Mom back in Pennsylvania. His parents had been divorced long before, but Dad and Lisa and Gabe would be in Springfield, close enough for the occasional visit.

But the moon’s orbit had changed, and the world as everyone had known it had changed in horrific ways. Billions had died from tsunamis, famine, and epidemics.

Dad was one of those billions. His death came a hundred miles before Jon and his family had reached Sexton. They were all half-starved by then, and had neither the strength nor the tools to bury him.

Julie hadn’t died like that. Julie died because of what Jon had done. Of the billions of dead, only Julie was his own. Only she would haunt him.

Jon got out of bed and walked to the window. It had rained all day, and the wind was from the south. The volcanic ash, which ordinarily covered the sky, had thinned as it sometimes did when rain and wind cooperated. Jon could see the pale outline of the moon, ominous and engorged, dominating the night.

Tomorrow, Jon hoped, the air would be clear enough to see the sun. And one day, the sun might appear on its own, not dependent on rain and the direction of the wind. He would wake up, the world would wake up, and the sun would be warm and glowing. Nothing would be so bad anymore.

But the billions would still be dead. Dad would still be dead. And Julie would still haunt his dreams.

Thursday, April 30

Jon didn’t know what time it was when he woke up, but it didn’t matter. It was still nighttime, hours to go before he ordinarily awoke.

Sometimes when he woke up in the middle of the night, he’d go downstairs, knock on Val’s door, and tell her to get up and make him something to eat. He might not even be hungry. It was more the comforting sensation of knowing there was food; there was always enough food. Even after two years of living in Sexton, Jon still needed the reassurance. And Val, a grub just like Carrie, would know better than to complain. Without her job as a domestic, there’d be no food for her.

But this time, Jon went downstairs to the kitchen by himself. Maybe a glass of goat’s milk would be enough, he thought. He still hadn’t developed a taste for it, but it was better than nothing.

To his surprise, he saw Lisa sitting at the kitchen table. She looked up and smiled. Couldn’t sleep either? she whispered.

Jon nodded. I thought I’d get a glass of milk, he said. Is there enough?

Quiet, Lisa said. Val’s sleeping. She got up, found him a glass, and poured him some milk. There’s enough for our breakfast, she said. Val can pick some up at the market tomorrow.

Jon sat down and drank the milk. You okay? he asked.

Lisa nodded. I’m glad we have this chance to talk, she said so softly Jon almost couldn’t hear her. It’s the evaluation.

Do you have a date yet? Jon asked. Everyone in Sexton got evaluated regularly. Those who weren’t pulling their own weight were made to leave the enclave. The rest were allowed to stay for another three years.

Not yet, she replied. Jon, I’m not supposed to know this, so keep this to yourself, but Gregory Hughes is in charge of my evaluation.

Tyler’s father? Jon asked, and Lisa nodded. But that’s good, right? he said. Tyler’s my friend. That’s got to help.

I think so, too, Lisa said. It’s like what your father used to say. It never hurts to be friends with the boss. Not that Tyler’s your boss. Of course he isn’t. It’s just, well, don’t pick any fights with him. Just go along with whatever he says, at least until the evaluation is over. Promise me, Jon.

No problem, he said. I don’t fight with him anyway. I promise.

Thank you. Lisa sighed. I know I must sound crazy, but I don’t know what I’ll do if I fail the evaluation.

You won’t fail, Jon said. Go to bed, Lisa. You need your sleep.

So do you, she said. Leave it for Val to clean up. She’s the only one who gets enough sleep around here.

Friday, May 1

Sexton University, where Jon’s high school was located, had been built to withstand tornadoes. No one had worried about earthquakes, but it turned out the buildings could withstand them also. A good thing too, since in the two years Jon had been in Sexton, there were no tornadoes but a dozen or more quakes.

At the first rumble they all knew what to do. The students and teachers in the various grades left their classrooms and sat on the hallway floor. They were supposed to cover their heads with their arms, but no one bothered. Even the teachers looked relaxed.

But the new girl, Sarah, was clearly upset. This was her first day at school, and from the looks of it, this was her first earthquake. At least her first one in Sexton. Jon didn’t know what the earthquake situation was where she used to live.

He inched over to her. It’s okay, he said. We get them all the time. It’ll be over in a minute.

All the time? she asked.

Well, not all the time, he said. My little brother, Gabe, doesn’t like them either.

How old is he? Sarah asked.

Three, Jon said.

Great, she said. I have the maturity of a three-year-old.

Jon laughed. He’s a very mature three-year-old, he said.

Rise and shine, Mr. Chandler, their chemistry teacher, said. Earthquake over.

Class period is over, too, Tyler pointed out.

All right, Mr. Chandler said. Go to lunch. I’ll see you all tomorrow.

Ordinarily Jon ate lunch with Tyler, Zachary, Ryan, and Luke. He’d had lunch with them ever since he’d made the soccer team, two years ago. But Sarah looked like she could use the company, so Jon walked to the cafeteria with her.

Hey, Jon, Luke called, but Jon shook him off and sat across from Sarah.

I know your brother’s name, she said. But not yours.

Jon Evans, he replied. And you’re . . .

Sarah Goldman, she said. That was my first earthquake. And my last, I hope.

Don’t count on it, Jon said. We’re near the New Madrid fault line. The geologists think the tremors are a good thing, letting pressure off. You’ll get used to them.

I don’t want to, Sarah said. She took a bite of her lunch, then put her fork down. I don’t want to get used to this lunch either. The vegetables are fresh. Why are they cooked so badly?

The woman in charge of the cafeteria was a tax lawyer, Jon said. Her brother’s on the town board. That’s how she got the job.

They should make her brother eat this crap, Sarah said. Make the punishment fit the crime.

We hang people here, Jon said. We don’t poison them.

Sarah laughed. I must sound horrible, she said. I’m sorry. This is all so new to me. Let me start over. Hi, Jon. Are you from Sexton?

From Pennsylvania originally, he said. Where are you from?

Connecticut originally, she said. Then we were relocated to North Carolina. Is your family in agriculture? Is that why you were settled here?

No, Jon said. We’re slips. She was going to find out anyway, he figured. She might as well hear it from him.

What’s a slip? she asked.

We slipped in, Jon said. We had passes for an enclave, so they had to let us in. We ended up here because it was the only enclave we knew about.

I don’t think we had any slips in our enclave, Sarah said. The whole town was a medical complex, much smaller than Sexton. My father’s a cardiologist. He was transferred to the White Birch clinic. That’s why we moved here.

My mother lives in White Birch, Jon said. With Miranda and Alex. My sister and her husband. Mom teaches high school there. I have an older brother too, but he doesn’t live around here. It startled him to share so much about his family. In a matter of minutes, Sarah had learned more about him than any of his friends had in over two years.

Do you live with your father? Sarah asked.

Jon shook his head. Dad’s dead, he replied. Lisa, my stepmother, and Gabe and I used the passes.

My mother’s dead, Sarah said. She died a couple of months ago. Then Daddy got transferred. It’s been hard on him. The clinic is terribly understaffed. There was a nurse there, but now it’s just Daddy and me. I do my afterschools there.

I play soccer for my afterschools, Jon said.

That’s your afterschool? she asked. Playing soccer?

For a moment Jon was irritated. All the students did afterschools—four hours of work each afternoon—and he knew soccer seemed more like play than work to the kids who held what they thought of as real jobs. It didn’t help that the Sexton team played all its games on the road, so no one at home ever saw them.

But work was work, and Jon didn’t need to hear from some new kid who thought she knew it all that what he did wasn’t necessary. All the clavers knew someday the White Birch grubs would try something, and when they did, the clavers would be outnumbered. That’s why the enclave was so heavily guarded. That’s why on Saturday afternoons all the students spent their afterschools in judo and rifle practice.

The idea was to hold off that someday for as long as possible. Civilization depended on it. The grubs outnumbered the clavers throughout America, but they had no idea how to grow crops in a cold and sunless world. They had no idea how to treat illnesses with limited amounts of medicine. They had no idea how to run a government, a school system, a city, an army.

Jon knew how lucky he was to be a slip, and how lucky it was that Lisa had found a job in administration right away. Alex had sacrificed his three passes so that Lisa and Gabe and Jon could live in a safer environment, one with food and shelter and electricity. The kind of life Alex had taken for granted when he was seventeen.

Jon had had two years of intensive study of botany, chemistry, and physics. There was no point studying history when history no longer mattered. Instead he was taught civics, government, leadership. He played soccer, not for the love of the game but because he was an athlete and he represented the strength and the power of the enclave system.

We train five days a week, Jon said. On Sundays we travel all around the state, for hours sometimes, to play. Coach says if we lose, it reflects badly on Sexton, on all the enclaves. It would make us seem weak, inferior. Winning shows the grubs who’s boss.

Grubs? Sarah said.

Yeah, grubs, Jon said. You must have had grubs in North Carolina.

You mean laborers, she said.

Is that what you called them? he asked. They’re grubs here. White Birch, all the towns around here are grubtowns.

Sarah frowned. That sounds so ugly.

It’s just a word, Jon replied. You don’t mind being called a claver. Why should they mind being called grubs?

I guess you’re right, she said. I mean, I do understand about the difference between us and them. Why we get to live in enclaves, in nicer houses, get better food, better everything.

It’s always been like that, Jon said. The rich always live better. Here, at least, people are rich because they have special skills. The botanists are rich, not some millionaire’s kid. And the grubs know how lucky they are to have jobs. Our domestics are grateful to be working in Sexton. I bet yours feel exactly the same.

I haven’t asked them, Sarah said. Maybe I will.

No, Jon said. Don’t. It’s better not to bring that stuff up.

If you don’t ask, then how can you know how they feel? Sarah said. Maybe you think they feel lucky because you don’t want to admit just how unlucky they are.

I’m not saying I know all the answers, Jon replied, but I trust the people in charge do. Have you seen the greenhouses? There are miles of them now and more going up every month. They weren’t here three years ago, and now they’re growing food for people all over the state. Including the kids at White Birch High.

Yes, Sarah said. But theirs is probably better cooked.

Couldn’t be worse, Jon said. They’re not saddled with a tax-lawyer chef.

Sarah laughed. Jon liked the sound of it, just as he liked how she looked: sandy hair, green eyes. Lunch tomorrow? he asked.

I can’t, she said. I won’t be in school tomorrow. I’m going into White Birch with Daddy, to help him set up the clinic. We’re opening on Sunday.

Monday, then? Jon persisted.

Will the food be this bad? she asked.

Jon nodded. Maybe worse.

How can I resist? she said. Lunch on Monday, with you.

Sunday, May 3

Jon got home to find Lisa putting Gabe to bed. He didn’t disturb her. Sunday was the only day Lisa had with Gabe. Like everyone else in the area, she worked Mondays through Saturdays. Everyone but him. Jon worked on Sundays, also.

Usually after a match Jon was in a good mood. Winning always felt good, and the bus ride back to Sexton was spent in celebration.

But not today. Of course Sexton had won. It was never a contest. The grubtown team was filled with guys who worked six days a week in factories or greenhouses. They had no time for practice. On Sundays maybe, in preparation for the match against Sexton, they played a little and drank a lot.

The Sexton team spent two hours daily on workouts and two more on soccer drills. They went to high school or college, and if they got drunk, they did it after the match was over.

The first half of the match had gone as always. Sexton led 3–1, keeping things close enough that the other squad and the grubs who came to see the match felt like they had a real chance. The clavers wouldn’t last. They were sissies and wimps. Grubs did real work. They just needed time and a little luck and the victory would be theirs.

During halftime the Sexton team went back to their bus, drank juice, and sucked oxygen while listening to Coach yell at them. Everything was fine. Everything was exactly as it should be, exactly as it always was.

But this time instead of winning 10–1, they won 8–2. And that was enough to put Coach in a rage.

He started the bus ride by screaming at Mike Daley, the college student who was the team’s top goalie. He should never have allowed that second goal.

It didn’t matter to Coach that the score was 7–1, with only ten minutes to play. Coach would have liked shutouts every game, except he’d been instructed to let the other team score at least once. Let them have their moment.

So Coach let the other team score, but one point was enough. Two was a show of weakness, and Daley had no business letting it happen.

Then it was Jon’s turn.

You could have scored two more points! Coach shouted. Don’t give away chances like that, Evans!

Actually, Jon had had three chances but had chosen to pass rather than go for the score. He’d never done that before. He was the team’s striker, and it had always seemed right to him that Sexton beat their opponents by as big a margin as possible.

But not today. Today it seemed like rubbing their noses in it, and he couldn’t see the point.

You’re a friggin’ slip! Coach screamed. A pansy-ass grub lover. Were they your brothers, Evans? Or were they your boyfriends?

A few of Jon’s teammates snickered. Jon would have snickered too if he weren’t the one being reamed.

Sorry, Coach, he muttered.

Sorry isn’t good enough, Coach said. You’re off the team, Evans, if you keep playing like this. Out of Sexton, if I have my way.

I’m sorry, Coach, he said again, this time in a stronger voice. It won’t happen again. I’ll show those grubs who’s boss.

Coach grinned. That’s the spirit, Evans, he said. Sure, you’re a slip, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t a claver. And a damn good one at that.

But sitting in the living room hours later, Jon still had a bad taste in his mouth. And it wasn’t from the bottle of potka they’d shared on the bus ride home.

Jon looked up as Lisa walked into the room. Are you hungry? she asked. There’s some leftover chicken in the fridge.

Maybe later, Jon said. We ate on the bus.

All right, Lisa said. If you don’t want it, Val and Carrie can have it for lunch tomorrow. How many goals did you score?

Four, Jon replied. We won eight to two.

That close? Lisa said. I bet Coach was angry.

Jon laughed.

Laura called, Lisa said.

Didn’t she know I was out? Jon asked. It was hard for Mom to make a phone call. None of the apartments had phone service, and no one was allowed to use the phones where they worked. There were a handful of pay phones in White Birch, and it took hours on Sunday to get to the front of the line.

She tried last night, Laura said, but there were five people ahead of her when the curfew siren went off. She said Matt’s going to be there next Sunday.

Matt lived in Coolidge, a couple of hundred miles away, working as a bike courier. He traveled all around the area, transporting letters and small packages for clavers. Sexton wasn’t on his route, but when he could, he swapped with another courier. Jon had seen him last in November, but he knew Matt had spent a weeknight with Mom, Miranda, and Alex in February.

There had been a time when Jon felt closer to Matt than to anyone else in the world. When the bad times had come, he and Matt had spent endless hours chopping down trees so there’d be firewood. The work they’d done had kept the family alive, and it had provided Jon with the opportunity to get to know his big brother. They worked and they talked, and Jon had felt grownup and respected.

But then Matt married Syl, and everything changed. And now Matt lived hundreds of miles away, and Jon was lucky to see him twice a year.

You must be due a Sunday off, Lisa said. I can’t remember the last time you had one.

Jon counted back. Ten Sundays, he thought. There were twelve men on the squad, and only eight went to each game, so no one was supposed to travel to more than eight games in a row. But Jon was the team’s best scorer, and Coach tended to forget the eight-game rule. Besides, slips were supposed to do a little more than anyone else.

I really want to see Matt, Jon said.

Of course, Lisa said. And it’s wonderful for Laura to have all her children with her. I’m sure you can get next Sunday off.

Jon wasn’t nearly as sure, not the way Coach had been screaming at him. But he’d have to try. It could be another six months before Matt was in White Birch on a Sunday, and it was never safe to predict six months ahead.

Monday, May 4

Most of the grubs who commuted to work in Sexton were taken by bus to the factories or the greenhouses and then picked up at the end of the workday for the ride back to White Birch. The only grubs permitted to walk in Sexton were the domestics, who did the shopping while the clavers were at work.

Clavers never walked. Even though most of the volcanic activity, caused by the change in the moon’s gravitational pull, had stopped nearly two years ago, the air quality was still bad, and it wasn’t a good idea to spend too much time outdoors. Buses ran regularly for clavers, with stops every few blocks.

Jon would have preferred to bike to school. It would take less time, and he’d enjoy the exercise and the privacy. But even though it wasn’t forbidden to bike, it wasn’t encouraged either. All the buildings in Sexton—the homes, the schools, the offices—had air purification systems, but there was no way to purify the outdoor air. So, like everyone else, Jon rode the bus.

Sarah got on the bus right as he did. Ryan and Luke were already on, but he sat next to her instead.

How was the soccer match? she asked him. Did you save civilization?

I did my part, Jon said. You can sleep safely tonight.

Sarah tilted her head toward the window. With all the guards here, I don’t have to worry. Unless they get ideas of their own.

You must have had guards in your other enclave, Jon said.

Yes, Sarah said. "But not as many. At least not as many on the streets. I

Reviews for The Shade of the Moon

[jennybeast · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I really loved the first book. Really, really loved it. This one is beating a very dead horse and I stopped reading 50 pages in.

[amkitty-511462 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I didn’t find this novel as compelling as the first three. It felt rushed and unexplored, with respect to the theme and overall character development. The final book in this series follows the youngest Evans family member as Jon navigates his final high school years as one of the “Clavers” from the enclave of Sexton College. It is an interesting contrast between his life several years into the apocalypse and his sister’s life when the event initially happens. In their respective tales, they are both 16/17 years old and nearly out of high school. The apocalypse is caused when the moon’s gravitational influence on earth increases after an astronomic collision. Of all the books, this one is the most difficult to accept as the MC makes several dramatic behavioral shifts that don’t quite ring true. There are a handful of other jarring discussions, events, and character actions that either snapped me out of the story or didn’t seem complete. Reading the author’s afterward explains a lot of my dissatisfaction with this story as she apparently bowed to outside pressures to create all the novels except the first. Not a horrible story, but this one definitely wasn’t feeling much love from the writer.

[melrailey-412132 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I must admit that I was a little disappointed that this book was about Jon and not Miranda and Alex. I LOVED Miranda and Alex and really wanted more of their story but once I got past that and learned to deal with this story being about Jon, I was OK. Jon was one of those protagonists that was hard to like. He's a bit self-centered and has a feeling of entitlement that kind of makes you want to slap him. But once he starts opening his eyes and looking at his world differently, he starts to come down off his pedestal and becomes more likable. There were parts in this book that broke my heart. Other parts were redeeming. This book was not Life As We Knew It nor was it The Dead & The Gone but it was a decent read. And I did love the glimpses I get of Miranda and Alex and how they were getting on.

[mhanover10 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I feel like this was the lesser of the four books. It felt like slip, grub and clavers was shoved down the throat of the reader. It was constantly mentioned, it felt like every other sentence had one of those words. I got it. There was a big distinction between different people. I didn't realize there was a fourth book in the series so I don't remember if it was ever mentioned why some people were considered better than others and were put in the enclaves and others were in places like White Birch as the domestics and worked in the mines. Why they didn't have nice things too. There was such a divide. Not a bad series though.

[rdwhitenack · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Wish Pfeffer would have done the whole book as well as she did the last 50 pages. The dialogue throughout is stilted if not confusing. Motives of the characters are completely unclear, and probably wouldn't be very interesting if they were. Several times the chance to make a true interesting twist were ignored. As the fourth book in the series, I personally think it was a bad idea to get away from the predicament the characters are facing to instead focus on the relationships. I almost gave up on the book, but my enjoyment of previous titles in the series kept me going. Would most likely not suggest to YA readers, especially struggling ones looking for high-interest reading.

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another gripping installment in the series that began with Life As We Knew It. The series goes in a grim dystopian direction with humanity's survivors now living in enclaves governed by a rigidly stratified caste system. The novel centers on characters introduced in previous books but the narrative's third-person perspective lacks the immediacy of the epistolary style.

[abigailub4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It has been two years since John Evans left with his family to find a better place to live. But while traveling his father dies and his sister gets pregnant. When they get to Sexton a local collage that was turned into a safe haven for important people. Like doctors, scientists, and governors. John is haunted by all the people he loved that died. His soccer skills has gotten him a place in Sexton with his stepmother Lisa and her son Gabe. John is swept away when a new person named Sarah comes to Sexton. The love he has for her can only be hidden for so long. Is it worth the risk?? I loved the series this is the last book of four so far. It is filled with heart break and loss. It's also filled with action and love at first sight. The characters are all so real to me and are hard to let go from when they die. I just love the way the author Susan Pfeffer writes it is so realistic. And it is mind gripping.

[littleton_pace · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Oh, Susan you should have stopped at book 1. This book is a true travesty that has ruined the world you created in the first book.I just don't get the disdain for humanity. And after only a few years. There is such an elitist system in place its really quite sickening. People who are lucky enough to live in enclaves (clavers) who have fresh air, plenty of food and even live-in servants, while anyone who isn't lucky enough to be in an enclave is labelled a grub/grubber, lives in slums, have awful food to eat, breathe disgusting air, are often raped and abused by clavers because grubs are worthless, and its all very horrifying. Even our protagonist, Jon, is a claver hating on grubs. I just don't get it.Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think society would change like that and I have a hard time believing that in just four years people have all agreed that this is the way things will be. Jon is supremely unlikeable especially in the way he treats his servants. The fact they even HAVE servants is disgusting, but Jon actually makes his servant wake up and cook him breakfast whilst thinking they shouldn't mind because its their job. And when his little brother wakes him up wanting to play, Jon screams for the nanny and then almost hits her. Jon goes to the shop and there is a long line of grubs, but Jon is a claver so he's let right to the front of the store. he wants one bar of soap, but the guards give him all the soap that;s left. Jon takes them because he knows soap will buy grubber girls. He actually thinks this, and grins as he gives his brother-in-law a bar of soap. Charlie cuts it up into four pieces because he knows he can get four grubber girls with it and Jon laughs. It's sickening. I hate Jon, I really hate him.This book is a great example of a series that should have stopped at one. I really liked book 1, but the introduction of Alex in book 2 and his grotesquely chauvinistic ways (from memory he scolded his younger sister because she didn't clean his clothes good enough) the series has gone downhill. It's now this oppressive society where men can do whatever they want (Jons only activity other than school is playing soccer) and women are slaves who cook and clean often while pregnant. Miranda, our hero from book one, is now pregnant and sickly because of the bad air she has to breathe in. I just don't understand this, if the goal is to preserve humanity, why not protect the pregnant women? It gets worse when Miranda collapses at work and is taken to hospital, we're told there's a "grub" level which is dirty and overcrowded. A nurse tells Jon that his sister will be back at work the day after she gives birth because grubs are fit to work when they say.We're told that Jon tried to rape Julie, Alex's little sister from the last couple of books. Jon tells us that he was just a teenage boy and it was sort of unavoidable. He tried to force himself on her, she fought back, screamed and ran outside, then she gets caught in a tornado and it paralyses her. Jon is haunted that he caused her death, because he did. Then Jon discovers that Miranda technically killed Julie because she gave her sleeping pills. We read this I think in book 3, and how hard it was for Miranda but Julie was in so much pain, there were no doctors or help. She was going to die anyway. But Jon is furious and now absolves himself from any wrongdoing in Julie's death, he now completely blames Miranda to the extent he wishes her and her unborn baby are sent to the mines, which is basically the worst place people can be sent.And I just can't even with Sarah, she's so unbelievable as a character, just some whiny girl whose madly in love with Jon even though she knows he assaulted Julie (but it's okay because he didn't rape her) and treats people like shit. Jon is thoroughly unlikable, I wish bad things to happen to him. He's an awful, awful human being who is so selfish and blind that he doesn't recognize how good his life is and how bad his mother's life is. He's just disgusting and I actually hate him.Towards the end of the novel, to "save" his former grub/slave, Jon forces her to marry him. They get married while she is handcuffed and with armed guards around her, and then ridiculous Jon tells her "no one forced you to get married". Whilst in the same scene telling her that she has to obey him because they're married.It was just so hard to read this book thinking "what the actual fuck have you done, Susan Beth Pfeffer?". She's made characters supremely unlikable who live in an almost perfect situation compared to others and has them complain over it. Just stop with these characters, Susan. They're done, and so am I.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although originally meant to be a trilogy, The Shade of the Moon is the fourth book in Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life As We Know It series. It’s been four years since the moon was knocked out of it’s orbit and closer to earth, and people are now settling down to a grim survival.I was rather disappointed with this book as I had enjoyed the previous three books in the series but I felt the author took the story in a very different direction with this book. We are expected to believe that after a scant four years, some people have developed a feeling of superiority and entitlement simply because they are the ones that live in the safe enclave. Jon Evans and his family have come to the safe town of Sexton, and the family decided that his step-mother Lisa and her young son, along with Jon would use the slips that allowed them to live inside the enclave. Jon, because of his soccer ability is living a life of privilege because he is a star on the team, but he is all too aware that one misstep could find him thrown out and having to join the rest of his family in the poor town of White Birch. People that live in White Birch are called grubbers and work as domestics or in the greenhouses raising food.I found it impossible to buy into this storyline. I can’t imagine a society would develop so quickly where basic human rights and equality would be so overlooked. The Evans family has been interesting to follow up to this point but the strong and independent members I am used to reading about were difficult to recognize in this book.

[johns.b4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Shade of the Moon by:Susan Beth Pfeffer is the 4th book in a long series of tough survival but in this book it takes a positive turn. The main character, Jon Evans, his stepmother Lisa, and his little half brother Gabe, get to use three passes into a safe town located in Sexton.They are known as clavers and all they have to do is wave their claver ideas around and they get anything available. Outside the gates of sexton where his mother Laura, his older sister Miranda, and her husband Alex. Unlike all the perfections he has in life his family in the town outside of Sexton called White Birch. While the clavers get free food and cut to the front of the line with their claver IDs, the lower class, or grubs ion this novel, have to wait in a line that takes hours and pay with the money they have working which isn't much. Also, inside the walls of sexton, they have air purification systems and domestics which are servants and you get a certain amount according to your level of importance. The domestics come from White Birch and are given a short amount of training, mostly on cleaning and cooking and then they are sent to their assigned house and do as they are told. Also, they are not even to walk outside in Sexton. Jon Evans, is the best striker on the Sexton soccer team that dominates all around the area against the grub teams because the grubs are working all day and the claver's soccer team gets to practice 6 days a week. Jon attends Sexton's high school and hangs out with his soccer team. Then, a new girl named Sarah moves in from another safe town. Jon starts to fall in love with her but then his friend Tyler tells him that she kicked Zachary's (another soccer player and friend of Jon), dad out of the enclave so that her dad or Dr. Goldman, could live their, which was a lie but Tyler's father is extremely powerful, so Jon pretends not to like her until the evaluation that could get them kicked out of the encalve. So, when his stepmother Lisa passed the evaluation he was able to be with Sarah. Then,

[lunule-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An unfortunate 4th book in an otherwise great series. I'm glad I stuck with it because Jon redeems himself a little bit but for the most part, everything I loved about the first 3 books is absent in this one. I would have preferred not to have read it and been left wondering what happened to everyone than to have this mess in my head.

[mirandalg14 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Thanks to Edelweiss and HMH Books for Young Readers for allowing me access to this title.

2.5 stars overall.

I loved the other 3 books in this series. The world buiding was amazing and I found myself wanting to conserve water and electricty and all resources. Unfortunately, this one just didn't have the same feel to it. The series took an abrupt from post-apocalyptic to a more dystopian/governement feel. I couldn't get connected to the characters in the same way I could with the other books. The social classes didn't feel realistic - it hadn't been that long from normal life, so why is this life so accepted as the way it is? Also, the ending seemed very rushed and abrupt to me. It just felt like the scene ended and then the writing just stopped. It didn't feel like a real ending to me.

Overall, I was a little disappointed in this one as I had been super excited to find there was an addition to the series.

[nycke137 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I rarely give books 5 stars, but this book was heartbreakingly amazing. I didn't even know it existed a week ago, and within that week, I won a copy of the ARC, read it and now have to come to terms that this is the end. Or is it?

[austinr.g3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the fourth book where all of the characters are in the same book. In the beginning Jon is living with his step-mom at an enclave named Sexton University. A new girl comes and Jon falls in love with her. However his friends do not like her. Then a soccer match starts and a riot starts. Some of Jon's friends are killed. Sadly Jon's step-mom kills herself so Jon runs away. The reason I gave this book the rating I did is because there is a lot more death. I also found out that Jon reaped Julie. He also tries to do that with his new girlfriend. Besides that this was a good book. What I didn't like is that there were different enclaves. For example where Jon lives is very wealthy. While where his girlfriend works is very poor.

[crazy4reading · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well I enjoyed this book and series. This book dealt more with Jon the youngest member in Miranda's family. He is the one that everyone would eat less so that he could have more food. His mother felt that her children were more important in surviving then herself.The last book left us with them traveling to the enclave in Tennessee. It is in Sexton. He is considered a slip along with his step mother and her son Gabe. They got into the enclave because they had passes. He is accepted and not accepted. The 'real' clavers remind him of him being a slip.The rest of his family is considered Grubs. Clavers think of them as poor and not deserving of any respect what so ever. They want everything handed to them. The Claver's talk down to the grubs who work in Sexton as house keepers, nannys, drivers etc.A new girl arrives at school, her name is Sarah and Jon befriends her only to be told by the 'real' clavers that she is not welcomed. Supposedly she is just a grub that has someone with a strong leadership in ranks. Sarah is different in that fact that she doesn't see people as being Clavers or Grubs. She sees them as people. Jon starts to realize how much he has been sheltered and given a better life due to his family giving things up.Jon also goes through a period of feeling guilty about Julie's death. He blames himself until he learns the truth about how she really died. The pain he goes through and hating his family for being Grubs, and yet still loving him. Jon truly grows in this book. He learns a lot about himself and the world in general.I don't know if this series is continuing but it could. This book also has questions at the end. I found the questions interesting and helps give you a different perspective of this series. Some things I noticed about this book I felt almost mimic how our society is really. The way we treat people differently if they don't look a certain way. If they do manual labor they aren't worthy of respect etc. I felt that the people in the Enclave felt they are better then everyone else and entitled to everything. I also feel that the people in the Enclave are almost like politicians and celebrities. They think that they can get away with everything. They are entitled to do what ever they want like get drunk and hurt the grub girls, kill people, burn buildings without repercussions. They will blame the grubs for all the bad stuff just like celebrities, politicians and people in general try to blame others for the things they do.

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I finished reading this novel feeling much more hopeful that I did at the end of book three. Told from the point of view of Jon (Miranda's younger brother) this story deals less with natural disasters and survival and more with the changing society, where those with essential skills become the elite and everyone else is relegated to second class citizenship.

[sleed_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Although I loved Life as we Knew It and had read the other books in this series, this one seemed to fall flat. The characters seem apathetic to the violence and death now. It's become unrelatable. Oh, my mother's hanging in a tree, riddled with bullets...I became confused with the characters as well, forgetting who went with whom from previous story lines.

[tfs93 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This whole series has been touch and go for me. I never liked Miranda's character. I did like Alex's story and I didn't mind the story of their families getting together. This story is about Jon and he is not any more likeable then Miranda. It is really hard to get into the storyline if you don't really care whether or not the characters live or die. There is good writing here, but the characters are so unlikeable that it is hard to get past them to enjoy the story itself.

[sublunarie · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I find it hard to put my disappointment with this book into words. Not only was following Jon a bad decision (as he was always the least interesting character), but this book made him a distinctly hate-able person. Although the ending aims for the idea of redemption, the amount of terrible things that Jon has done, attempted, thought, and said aloud is so overwhelming that I don't see how he could ever claim redemption. The other characters suffer not only from having lost their original voices (both literally and figuratively) but also from direct association with Jon. Sarah, Luke, and Opal all could have been successful independent characters, but from their association with Jon they become shadows of what they might have been. This especially goes for Sarah, who has the potential to be a strong, moralistic, humanitarian but by making her "fall in love" with Jon, she loses all potential.In the afterward, Pfeffer states she wrote a different 4th book that her publishers hated, and then wrote this one instead. I'd be willing to place a hefty wager that the original 4th was far superior to this awkwardly-written, ill-placed tome.

[deslivres5 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I loved the first and second books in this series, and read the third and was pleasantly surprised to find out that a fourth book had been written to continue the saga. But without giving away any spoilers, I did not enjoy this book: it put me in a bad mood. Maybe I forgot too much of the third book, but the world in the fourth book seemed inconceivable to me, after only four years after the catastrophe that such a divided society could/would exist and be tolerated by the main characters.

[nbmars · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is book four in the post-apocalyptic series by Pfeffer about life on earth after the moon has been knocked from its orbit. I had thought the series was a trilogy, and maybe it originally was, but now there is this fourth book to fill us in on what happened to the survivors of the previous books.I enjoyed the first book, Life As We Knew it, but I wasn’t as much of a fan of the next two (The Dead & The Gone and This World We Live In). This newest one appealed to me the least.We pick up two years after the last book left off, in an enclave of survivors that now has two classes of people: the “clavers” who have gotten into the enclave, and the “grubs” who do domestic work for the more “valuable” clavers. (Value is loosely determined but seems to have been – originally, at least – intended to designate the skills that could contribute the most to future of the planet.)The focus is on Jon Evans, seventeen, and in high school in The Clave in Sexton, Tennessee. His mom and surviving siblings live in the nearby grub town of White Birch. Jon lives with his stepmom Lisa and her little son Gabe. There were only three passes to The Clave for the family, and this is how they decided they would be best used. Jon and Lisa and Gabe aren’t technically clavers; they are called “slips” because they “slipped in” on the passes, and so they are scorned by Clavers, but not hated as badly as grubbers.Jon has absorbed the prejudices of his classmates, but his worldview is put to the test when he falls in InstaLove with a new girl, Sarah, whose father is the new clinic doctor for the grubs. In spite of Jon’s troglodyte-like attitudes and history of Very Bad Behavior With Girls, Sarah, too, falls into InstaLove. But Sarah happens to hold the radical view that people are people - even grubs, and this could get them all into trouble, threatening their very lives. Discussion: There is not much world-building in this book; it is assumed you know what happened in the first three books. Indeed, because it had been a while since I read them, I struggled a bit with picking up the threads of the story. It was also hard to like Jon, who is the main protagonist. Yes, the whole idea is that he “grows,” but both his piggishness in the beginning and his transition to sainthood by the end were a little too unconvincing to me. I also just wasn’t buying the sudden division of the world into these two groups; it just didn’t make sense to me that former Ph.D.s would put up with a life scrubbing floors, when they had the intellectual wherewithal to do something about it.Evaluation: Fans of the first three books of this series will appreciate knowing what happens two years after the last book, because, doesn’t one always want to know what the author decides will happen? Not recommended as a standalone.

[kimpiddington · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Eagerly awaited this sequel, but couldn't fall in love with the protagonist, Jon. Miranda's voice, in my opinion, was so much stronger. Also, there were a few plot weaknesses. For example; Jon is insistent about getting a character who knows some information away from the enclave. When he finds out later that he actually did not - it suddenly doesn't matter. Why not?

[lilibrarian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fourth in the series about Miranda and Alex, they are living outside one of the enclaves and working as virtual slaves. Miranda's brother Jon, is a "slip" as is their stepmother Lisa and halfbrother Gabe. They live in the enclave, but their status is uncertain.