Book Review - Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Don’t you just hate it when your teachers decide to give you assignments on the same topic but don’t allow you to pass in the same thing for all of the classes? Pennsylvania teen Miranda’s knows that feeling. A meteor is scheduled to hit the moon one Wednesday night, and three of her teachers, including her French teacher, want her to write up an assignment on it. This was Miranda’s biggest worry and annoyance until the meteor actually hits the moon and, to the surprise of scientists all over the world, brings it a bit closer to the earth. The trivialities that consumed Miranda’s diary – Life As We Knew It is written in diary form – are replaced by concerns for basic survival, while tsunamis wreak havoc across the globe and life as they knew it changes forever. It’s difficult to review this book because so much of what happens needs to be revealed as you read the book. Life As We Knew It is in turn suspenseful, depressing, hopeful, horrifying, and inspiring. Like The Rules of Survival, this book is about a teenager trying to make it, but at least in Nancy Werlin’s book, the whole world wasn’t thrown into question. Cut of from communication for most of the book, Miranda and her family make a concerted effort to make it, but make it until what? They can only guess and hope.