Miranda is a high school senior with divorced parents, two brothers, lives with her mother, and has just learned she is going to have a younger step sibling because her father and stepmother are expecting. At school, Miranda and her friends Sammi and Megan are finding their way through losing a friend to disease. Sammi is acting out, Megan has found God, and Miranda just wants her old friends back. The novel is Miranda's diary, a new project to help settle her thoughts and learn more about herself.
Instead of this being another girl diary book, this book is set apart by a significant happening; everyone is waiting to view a meteor hit the moon. Similar to waiting for Haley's Comet or gathering to watch a meteor shower, townspeople have planned parties, classes in school are teaching about the occurrence, and the event has a party-like atmosphere complete with astronomers from CNN. Something cataclysmic goes wrong, instead of bouncing off the moon the meteor hits the moon and knocks it out of orbit. It lurches closer to earth and begins to effect life as Miranda knows it and everything changes.
Anyone who has gone through a winter snow storm and witnessed the mad rush to stores for toilet paper and milk, or worse lived through hurricanes and tornadoes, will recognize the life changing effect this happenstance has on the town, the state, and the country. When I left Megan today, her family was cutting back to two meals a day and fasting one day a week to save food for the winter. Hope is dwindling and the panic and pressure felt by Megan, her mother, family and friends.
A serial end-of-the-book reader, I am forcing myself to read the book and not skip to the end. At this point, my biggest fear is a quick happily ever after. I do not think that will be the case as Pfeffer has worked hard to keep the tone and pace of this book realistic while building suspense for what happens next.
Update: 10/20/06
** Spoiler alert ** End of book information **
I finished today and after rereading the beginning of this post I wonder if my expectations were too high. The book remained readable and the hardships Miranda, her family, and her friends endured were neither sugarcoated, nor embellished for the sake of drama. I applaud the effort made by the author not to produce a pat "happily-ever-after" ending, it would have been unrealistic and an insult to the integrity of her work. With that said, I was disappointed at the constant events of death, suicide, and illness throughout the last half of the book. Some was natural, even understandable if that term may be applied, but as the body count grew I began to wonder if the end of the book was really going to be the end. Period.
It's reaching to say the book ended on a high note, but Pfeffer did leave readers with hope.
Tags: Susan Beth Pfeffer, Life As We Know It, Children's Literature, Young adult literature, YA books
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