Review: Life as we Knew it, by Susan Pfeffer

Our world ends tonight...

Sixteen year old Miranda isn't that interested in the meteor that's supposed to hit the moon. She has other things to worry about – her father's new wife's pregnancy, for one, and her best friend's worrying new found religion, for another. The whole meteor thing is just an excuse for more homework, as far as she can tell.

She's wrong.

The meteor knocks the moon closer to the earth. Immediate reports of tidal waves start coming in from around the globe, and that's just the beginning. Earthquakes and volcanoes quickly follow. Miranda and her family are in for the struggle of their lives...

First of all; this is the first of a series, but it stands on its' own — no cliffhanger. Except of course that you'll be desperate to find out what happens next, to Miranda and her brothers and mother.

Now that that's out of the way...

The book's written as Miranda's journal, in present tense, which ratchets up the tension as there's no hint of what's going to happen next until it happens. It also makes it much easier to get inside Miranda's head, to the point that you almost feel what she's feeling...it's a shock, sometimes, to look up from Miranda describing scraping snow off the roof and realise that the sun's shining out here in the real world.

Miranda's world gets smaller in stages; no Internet or phones or TV, no school, no trips to town, no holiday away, and finally no room to be alone. But as her world gets smaller, her ability to see joy in the tiniest things gets larger; a dinner with friends, a piece of chocolate, a joke with her brothers or a conversation with her mother.

A lot of readers have said that this book made them go out and stock up on tinned food and batteries. I'd have done the same if I thought I had any chance of surviving a catastrophe like this one. {I haven't. That's why I like to read about them.} Miranda not only survives, she grows and learns from the experience, and she's much more than a year older at the end of the book, March 20th. {The years are cunningly not mentioned. This worries me a little, but we're past May 18th for this year, anyway.}

One of the best in the post apocalyptic genre, and a welcome respite from vampires.



We are a family. We love each other. We've been scared together and brave together. If this is how it ends, so be it.
Only, please, don't let me be the last one to die.