Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

3 reviews

ashleymg99's review

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I read this book a long time ago, and it’s stuck with me since my first read through. Reading it again is just as heart-wrenching, especially on the heels of the COVID pandemic. 

I mourn for Miranda and the way she had to grow up too fast, and take on responsibility that no 16 year old should do.
From giving up meals for her younger brother to finding Mrs. Nesbitt dead and carrying out her last wishes, Miranda is constantly faced with problems many of us only confront in our nightmares.
 

This dystopian novel is much more grounded in reality than some of its other YA counterparts. A global, environmental disaster that hit so suddenly, in stark contrast to the creeping threat of climate change, leaves you wondering if you could survive the apocalypse at 16. 

Under it all, Life as we Knew it is a story about family, hope, survival, and growing up. It’s dark and desperate but also underscores the little things that make life worth living. 
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crizzle's review

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dark emotional slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

3.25

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taliahsbookshelf's review

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challenging emotional hopeful tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This is a good read - pretty easy, but still covers a lot of information and goes into into development on the story without sacrificing ease of understanding the plot and where it's going. Susan Beth Pfeffer does a good job setting up the series with this book, but it could just as easily be a standalone if you don't want to read the rest of it (though I suggest continuing). Our narrator drives me crazy - Miranda Evans is supposed to feel like your average teenage girl living through what people would probably call the apocalypse (the moon moving closer to earth - for more details, read the book!), but I just find her kind of whiny. Like, I get she's going through a lot and has a lot to process as a young girl going through all of this, but there's a tone taken throughout the book that makes it somewhat difficult to sympathize with her, even though it's written in first person. This was especially surprising with the diary format, but it still holds, regardless. Nonetheless, disliking the narrator/MC doesn't mean I dislike the book, and that was definitely the case for this.

Spoilers:
Low-level spoiler:
Reading back through this, I am realizing that Miranda's mom probably had a great idea of what to get, and I do think reading this again after the pandemic has given me a much better idea of how people would actually react if they were to go through something like this.

Low-level spoiler:
The first time I read this through a couple years ago, I didn't think twice about the surgical masks comment. However, given what we've gone through recently, I genuinely thought this was kind of funny. Obviously, this was not intentional on the part of the author, but I doubt anyone in the future going through something like what happens in this book would actually find the surgical masks "weird," just based on the pandemic and how everyone was wearing them.
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