A review by loubugsey
Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

3.0

I found this book a quick and easy read. What I liked about this book is that it is an end of the world, disaster story where the main character; Miranda and her family, sit and do very little, they just survive. What?! I hear you say. Well, there's so many stories out there where the characters are these awesome take on the world personalities but this book shows us what a silent majority under the right circumstances may do. Sit it out, wait for somebody else to do something, wait for the electricity, the food to appear, the weather to change. I mean these people sat waiting for the electricity to come on so they could switch the dishwasher (wtf??!!!), washing machine and hoover on. I just had to laugh. The dishwasher!? Sounds ridiculous but I think this showed an element of shock, an unwillingness to accept the true nature of the predicament they were in or even a lack of understanding.
It was a story about people who didn't live in the city and this allowed the author to give us a somewhat mundane version of events. I found Miranda's voice to be realistic, frustratingly so at times, yes I could imagine a teenager writing a diary like this under these circumstances. I've seen people criticising the science behind these circumstances, I'm not sure how accurate or inaccurate this is, I know the moon's positioning is quite critical to life on earth, amazingly so but I'm taking a step back from that. I'd definitely read another Pfeffer book based on this one.