Personal Favorites: Life As We Knew It

***this should have posted yesterday but I didn't check when I went out of town to make sure it had, but I'm posting it now***

Synopsis:
Everyone knew there was going to a meteor hitting the moon; they were supposed to observe it for school and people were even having parties to watch it.  No one was worried, but they should have been.  The meteor hit the moon harder than expected, pushing it closer to the earth and causing all kinds of problems.  Suddenly, things they take for granted like food, gas and even school are no longer a guarantee.  Miranda and her family find themselves struggling to survive in a world that they no longer know.

Review:

Character:
Miranda: You can't say that Miranda handled the situation gracefully, or that you hope you take things as well as she did.  She acted as a lot of teenagers might, a little spoiled, a little self-centered and a lot scared.  She makes some irresponsible choices because she doesn't understand how bad things really are, partly because her mother is trying to protect her.  When her family really needs her though, she doesn't back down.  I like her for her realness, even if she annoys me at times.

Plot:
I requested this book from Paperback Swap, but when it arrived I couldn't remember  what it was about or why I wanted it.  I was actually reading something else when I picked it up while I was waiting in my car for someone.  I don't know why, but the initial line about her father's new wife being pregnant intrigued me; it seemed like a different way to start a book about the end of the world.  The more I read, the more that the story hit me and disturbed me, not because it was gruesome (it wasn't) or because of all the horrible things that were happening, but because I felt like most people would respond similarly in that situation.  It felt real.  Sure the science is faulty and the Earth is not likely to end that way, but the human reactions were real, and they stuck with me.  This one one of those stories I talked about a lot right after I read it, and still bring up from time to time.

***Thursday I will be posting my review of Book 2: The Dead and the Gone because you could easily start with that book instead of this one***