Life as We Knew It

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

This is what my YA book club is reading this month. Life as We Knew It is a harrowing and gripping story that details one family’s life after a meteor collides with the moon. It is written in diary format, as Miranda chronicles her daily life at school where everyone is dimly aware of the impending collision. After the meteor hits, the effects are worse than predicted, with tsunamis and volcanic activity destabilizing the Earth’s climate. Miranda’s mother does her best to hold the family together by hording food and rationing meals. Her brothers help out with the house, and while a semblance of normal life continues for a time as winter sets in the conditions grow worse and worse, and it is clear that the family is slowly dying of starvation.

Miranda’s normal concerns of high school friendship, sports, and boys continue while her family struggles to stockpile wood for the winter, but as people in her town die off or move to warmer locations in the hope of finding more food her world grows smaller and smaller until she’s left with only the room with a wood burning stove where her family sleeps on mattresses. The book ends on a slight note of hope, but the impact of the disaster on Miranda and the world in general isn’t minimized. I finished this book in a day, and it is definitely worth reading if you enjoy well-written YA speculative fiction.

11 comments to Life as We Knew It

  • Mady

    What is Miranda’s last name?

  • Kayla

    i just started reading the book……i got to the part where school ended and you flip the page and it says summer……not very far….

  • Jordan

    ya im wondering what miranda’s last name is to, it doesn’t say in the book

  • Beatrice

    best book ever! i loved every word of it.

  • clarissa

    dose every body die or what

  • ZHANAE

    I LOVE BOKK I JUST STARTED READING IT IN CLASS FOR SSR BUT THEN I REALLY GOT INTO I AND I HELLA LIKED IT…………READ IT. ITS A GREAT BOOK.

  • Jen

    This is the absaloute best book I have ever read in my entire life!! what is mirandas last name??

  • Jen

    wait! there should be a sequel… how did the mayor get that food? cause there can be no crops or anything… they must die in like the next year or something… i doubt anything will get back to normal, cause houston would be underwater, so they can’t just pushs back the moon… volcanoes would run out of lava, then their might not be any gravitational pull… please don’t let this happen to us… they would be better off than those poor villages in like africa that you see on things like world vsion… Please make a sequel to it Susan Pfeffer!!!

  • Jen

    in that book world, ittmight turn out to be like the dinosaurs died…

  • Shelbey

    I’M DOING A BOOK REPORT ON THIS AMAZING BOOK. But. I cant find her last name!!

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>