In the End

by Demitria Lunetta

Overview

The thrilling conclusion to In the After is the survival story of Amy and Baby, set in a near future where Earth has been overrun by vicious, predatory creatures. This is a perfect read for fans of New York Times bestsellers like The 5th Wave
and Across the Universe.

It’s been three months since Amy escaped New Hope, and she’s been surviving on her own. Then one day
Amy gets a call from Kay and hears the four words she had hoped she would never hear: Dr. Reynolds has Baby. Now it’s a race against time, for Baby is in imminent danger, her life threatened by the malevolent doctor who helped start the end of the world. Amy must make her way to Fort Black, a prison turned survivor colony, where she will need to find Ken, Kay’s brother, who holds the key to Baby’s survival.

One small slipup on this quest might not only cost Baby and Amy their lives but could also threaten the survival of the people in the After.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781483005010
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	06/28/2014
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.50(h) x 5.00(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Chicago native Demitria Lunetta is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and a faithful follower of all things YA on her blog www.demitrialunetta.blogspot.com. She holds a BA in Human Ecology and has spent countless hours studying the many ways in which people are capable of bringing about their own destruction. In case the end is near, she always carries a good book and a chocolate bar—the two items essential for postapocalyptic survival.

Editorial Reviews

The lightning-swift pace and strong female characters create a satisfying page-turner that offers as happy an ending as one can expect in such a world.

Booklist

Review for IN THE AFTER: “Will likely leave readers stunned.

The Horn Book

Review for IN THE AFTER: “Consuming! Fascinating and full of twists. Scary in the best way! I couldn’t look away. Once you start this book, you won’t close it until the story’s over…and then you’ll sit there wanting more.

Sophie Jordan

Review for IN THE AFTER: “Part adventure, part mystery, Demitria Lunetta’s In the After is an exciting and scary read that had me hyperaware of every noise, every breath. This book completely consumed me.

Jodi Meadows

In this sequel to Lunetta’s In The After (HarperTeen, 2013), Amy, now seventeen, continues her strong first-person, present-tense narration of her struggle for survival in a bleak, postapocalyptic landscape. In a dystopian near future, flesh-eating monsters have taken over most of the planet, and only scattered pockets of terrified human survivors remain. As Amy learned in the first installment, the zombie-like monsters are the result of an experiment gone wrong in the laboratories of New Hope, a secure Kansas research facility where Amy’s mother and other scientists now frantically seek a cure to the lethal virus. Expelled from the New Hope compound for defying its sinister director, Dr. Reynolds, Amy undertakes a dangerous trek to the only other known sanctuary, a walled prison fortress in Fort Black, Texas. While fighting to establish herself in that tough community, Amy learns that Baby, the toddler she had rescued and nurtured through three frightening years “on the outside,” has become the latest subject of Dr. Reynolds’s reckless experiments. Amy must now return to New Hope to confront Dr. Reynolds and his henchmen and find a pathway to a humanity-saving cure that does not involve lethal experimentation upon unwilling and uninformed subjects. Amy is a terrific girl hero: quick thinking, resourceful, and brave. Unlike many of the adult survivors she encounters, she retains her humanity in the face of horrifying threats. Billed as the “thrilling conclusion” of a tale in two volumes, this well-paced, exciting science-fiction chiller is best appreciated as the sequel to In The After. Reviewer: Walter Hogan; Ages 12 to 18.

VOYA, August 2014 (Vol. 37, No. 3) - Walter Hogan

06/01/2014
Gr 9 Up—This sequel picks up the action right where In The After (2013) leaves off. After escaping the eugenic horror of New Hope, Amy finds her way to another survivor's camp, the former Texan prison complex of Fort Black. Instead of fleeing from monsters on the outside, Amy has to protect herself from many dangerous people seeking dubious refuge behind prison walls. It has a complex social structure where the few surviving women (with one exception) need to be claimed by men in order to survive, and while Amy balks at the idea of being property she plays along, allying herself with a kind young man with powerful connections. She's on an intelligence mission, tries to protect her little sister left behind in New Hope, and keeps uncovering truths about the engineered apocalypse. The previous book is a thrilling monster story with an exciting, twisting, conspiracy-driven plot. This entry continues in this style while delving deeper into far more disturbing themes, including addiction, human testing, and sexual predation. This novel is somewhat more intense than the first title, mostly due to the violence (sexual and otherwise), however none of it is gratuitous, and is well suited to the plot. The writing is clear and immediate, and the suspense is tightly crafted. It ends on a satisfying note, with room for hope, but not tied up in too neat a package.—Kyle Lukoff, Corlears School, New York City

School Library Journal

2014-04-09
Surviving an alien apocalypse (check). Escaping repressive, fanatical scientists (check). But that is hardly the end for Amy, as this sequel to In the After (2013) demonstrates.Having escaped the "safe" enclave New Hope with the help of friends, 17-year-old Amy keeps her sonic emitter close to ward off Floraes, which, it turns out, are humans zombified by a bacteria rather than aliens. Amy isn't sure she wants to travel to Fort Black, another enclave of normal humans, until she gets a communication from her friend Kay that the evil Dr. Reynolds, who nearly killed Amy, now has her foster sister, Baby, and is experimenting on her. Kay indicates that Ken, her brother, who is at Fort Black, may be able to help. When Amy arrives, she finds Fort Black was actually a prison, and conditions haven't improved much. She must try to find Ken while dodging homicidal maniac Tank. She has the help of Jacks, the Warden's nephew, but she must pretend to be Jacks' possession, which doesn't sit well. Can she find Ken and maybe help with a vaccine to end the Florae menace? Lunetta's conclusion to her duology is not as twisty or enthralling as its predecessor (all the good reveals have been revealed), but it does extend Amy's tale with action and romance.Fans will enjoy this greatly, but the real punch was in the first. (Science fiction. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews