Life As We Knew It

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Summary: Sixteen year-old Miranda's normal life of swim team, friends, a crush, and life with her divorced parents and two brothers comes to a halt when a meteor crashes into the moon, throwing the earth's forces of nature off course and causing earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. Her diary details her family's struggle to survive.

My thoughts: This one has been getting a fair bit of good press and one of my colleagues is simply crazy about it, so I thought I'd give it a go. Survival stories aren't usually my bag, but this one was really well done. I thought it was a pitch-perfect account of what life would be like - the dwindling food, fear, cabin fever, finding joy in small things, alternating between optimism and despair and between loving and hating the people you were trapped with. School Library Journal rightly describes it as "frighteningly plausible." It also blew my mind that a change in gravity would cause all of those disasters - what do we take for granted more than gravity?

What I learned about SheReads: She says she found this book fascinating and not so far-fetched that she couldn't see it happening in the here and now. I agree with her on both counts, although I certainly hope it doesn't happen! She also noted in her challenge writeup that she seems "to read a lot of books that are YA and fewer and fewer adult books." - I'm finding that happening to me, too. I'm trying to reduce my TBR pile but SO many fab new YA titles come across my desk that the old adult ones get put aside yet again.