Book Review: Life as we Knew it

TITLE: Life as We Knew It
PART IN SERIES: Book one in a trilogy
AUTHOR: Susan Beth Pfeffer
PUBLISHED: 2006
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: Science fiction, drama
PREMISE: When a meteor knocks the moon forward it causes devastation across the planet effecting everyone...
MY REVIEW: Just a warning for the casual young adult reader: this book is not sappy/happy/typical YA. There is little to no romance (and what romance there is isn't neccessarily happy). This is about devastation that happens across the earth and how that effects one family...think a really extreme future version of The Diary of Anne Frank (minus her dying at the end).
One thing about this book is...that it's kind of scary how completely plausible the ideas Pfeffer comes up with are in this book. I completely bought this happening because scientists have mentioned the moon plays an important part in our system or whatnot and should something like this occur...well lets just say we'd be in deep trouble and I hope it never happens (and I'm exceedingly happy it didn't happen during the Bush administration like it occured in this book). The only thing I didn't get was the electricity part of it. I didn't really understand why the electricity was going in and out because I would think the moon wouldn't have much effect on that...but maybe I'm wrong or perhaps the author explains that in the rest of the trilogy.
Anyway, what I can say is that this is a really powerful book (and will definitely be one of those "make you grateful for what you have" type things) and is pretty well written. I found maybe some of it a bit extreme but all in all it was pretty good. Especially as from what I understand this was the author's first book at the time. I will definitely be picking up the next book The Dead and the Gone and the third book which is currently in hardback.
WHO SHOULD READ: science fiction fans, fans of survivalist stories
MY RATING: Four and a half out of Five cans of soup

FOR THE FOLLOWING CHALLENGES:
One Hundred Plus Books
YA Challenge

So for those wondering, I'm now back from Colorado, and have finished three out of four of the books I brought so many reviews are coming up. Including one for the book I finally got my hands on while in Boulder, CO.: Discworld book one: The Color of Magic. I'm telling you, Boulder is like bookstore heaven. There's a huge Borders and Barnes and Noble. Then there's the Boulder bookstore which has a pretty awesome selection of art books and graphic novels as well as several used books and then there's little places of books here and there. It was wonderful. Oh, and the mountains were nice too ;)