Life as we knew it by Susan Pfeffer

No shops. No TV. No Electricity. No Daylight. No idea if your family is alive or dead. Could YOU survive? When a freak asteroid knocks the moon from its orbit, horrific tides engulf parts of the globe, and life on earth changes overnight. For 15-year-old Miranda as power, communications and food supplies start to break down, a desperate battle for her family's survival begins.

I first heard about this book at Becky's Book Reviews around a year ago when she interviewed Susan Pfeffer and I immediately added it to my TBR list. I may have heard of it before that, but that was the post that made me add it to the list. One of the things that I try to do with any reading challenges is to pick books that are already on my list so when Carl announced this year's Sci-fi Experience, I figured that this would fit the bill. I have to say, I am really glad that I chose this as one of the books for the Experience.

This is a young adult book told in a journal format, and our main character is 16 year old Miranda who lives with her mother and brothers in Pennsylvania. Like everyone else in the world, Miranda and her family are transfixed as they watch the coverage of the moon being hit by an asteroid. It is a major news event but everyone is reassured by all the experts who are commentating on the event and life is expected to go on as normal. Sometimes though, the experts get things wrong, and in this case they get things very wrong.

With the moon off it's axis, the tides are effected, and the first sign of trouble comes in the form of huge tsunamis around the world, but not long after there are earthquakes and long dormant volcanoes erupting causing massive death tolls. There are increasingly regular power outages, to the point where it is more common to have no electricity than to have it, and the weather is also effected, going from one extreme to another throughout the period of the book.

As soon as Miranda's mother realises that there is a chance that things won't get better they set about stockpiling anything and everything that might help them get by but the biggest worry as things get worse rather than better is that despite all the preparations, there is not going to be enough for everyone to be able to survive.

Reading Miranda's journal as the events go on, we are exposed to her emotions and see how they change. At first it is very normal sixteen year old girl emotions about boys, and in particular her favourite ice skater, about the prospect of learning to drive, fights with her mum and a little confusion about the events in her family with her dad announcing that his new wife is now pregnant. Miranda goes through a range of emotions from anger to despair to acceptance to resignation, and yet throughout the book there are also enough moments of hope (for example the family's first Christmas since the fateful night when everything changed) and love. Pfeffer touches on several different topics such as first love, the way some people might turn to religion during such a time, vigilantism and death of loved ones, and large scale death such as we saw with the tsunamis. In some ways this felt a bit close too home given everything that has been going on here with the bushfires recently.

I normally have one book that is my reading on the train book, and another that is my reading at home book. I started this one on Friday morning when I was not far from work. There was then a problem on the train so I was stuck for half an hour or so so I was able to get a really good start on it. By the time I got home, I just wanted to get to the end to find out what happened. There was no way known that I was going to be able to wait until I got on the train on Monday to finish this book.

It was in turn moving, chilling, realistic and scary and totally worth reading! I was all ready to request the follow up book, but apparently it is not going to be released here until 2010 which is a very long wait.

Reading this book did make me wonder how my son and I would survive in this kind of situation, and the short answer is not very well. I don't know that I would have the presence of mind to be able to get things together, let alone the ready cash that Miranda's mother had. The other thing is that there is just the two of us and so we wouldn't be able to divide the jobs up, but at least I wouldn't have to look at my kids and decide which one had the most chance of survival and therefore give them more food. That and the fact that as Australians we wouldn't have the foggiest how to survive in blizzards or even just temperatures that cold! Brrr!!

When I was looking for the cover image, I had a look at her page at Fantastic Fiction, and I was surprised to see that this author had written so many books over quite an extended period of time. My library doesn't have any of the others, which is a bit disappointing because I will definitely be reading at least the next book!

By finishing this book, I have now completed this year's Sci-Fi Experience. I really enjoy this experience as it does make me read outside of my comfort zone a little, and I enjoyed both books that I read this year.

Rating 4.5/5

Other Blogger's Thoughts:

Things Mean A Lot
An Adventure in Reading
Stephanie's Confessions of a Book-a-holic
Bookfoolery and Babble
Rosario's Reading Journal

The Sci-Fi Experience 2009

Okay, so I am shallow and have joined a challenge/experience because of the awesomeness of the button! Actually, I may have done that before too, and I did participate in last year's version of the challenge as well, so perhaps, just perhaps, I am not totally shallow. Maybe?

Anyway, Carl V is once again hosting the Sci-fi Experience. In his words:

As I said last year, this is an experience and not a challenge. There are no reading lists, book requirements, etc. I do not argue about what is or is not considered ’science fiction’. Nothing about this two month period of science fiction celebration should cause anyone to feel obligated to participate. I host two other very involved challenges throughout the year and the last thing I want to do is start a new year adding stress to your busy lives or my own. This is simply a time to experience how exhilarating science fiction can be.

Again from last year:

“More than any other genre of fiction, science fiction reading is to me an experience– not only does it transport me to another time and place in the future but it also transports me to my past and as such creates an aura of reading that is wonderful to experience but difficult to describe. I can only hope that you fellow readers are nodding your heads in agreement right now, recalling similar experiences that you have with various novels and/or genres of fiction.”

The main reason for me to participate in the Experience is that sci-fi is one of the genres that I don't read very often, and so I like to try and expand my exposure to the genre as a whole. I really enjoyed the book I read last year, and then The Host by Stephenie Meyer is one of my favourite reads of 2008, so it does seem like a good idea to read another sci-fi book. The question is what? I could read the second book in the Island in the Sea of Time trilogy but I guess that would be cheating a little. I have borrowed it from the library a couple of times over the last twelve months but had to return it unread.

I think though I am going to give myself two books to read. Both are cross genre reads. The first is a sci-fi/romance that I bought months ago and haven't read yet - Wanderlust by Ann Aguirre. The other is a YA/sci-fi book that I first read about at Becky's Book Reviews, and have seen around other places in blogland - Life as We Know It by Susan Pfeffer.



****Edited to say****

I will of course be reading Grimspace, the first book in Ann Aguirre's ongoing series, not the second book!

Let Sleeping Rogues Lie by Sabrina Jeffries

"Don't let yourself be fooled, Madeline: once a rake, always a rake." -- Mrs. Charlotte Harris, headmistress

When Madeline Prescott took a teaching position at Mrs. Harris's School for Young Ladies, it was to help restore her father's reputation. Instead, she's in danger of ruining her own. The devilishly handsome Anthony Dalton, Viscount Norcourt, has agreed to provide "rake lessons" to Mrs. Harris's pupils so they can learn how to avoid unscrupulous gentlemen, and Madeline is to oversee his classes. She has always believed that attraction is a scientific matter, easily classified and controlled -- until she's swept into the passionate desire that fiercely burns between her and Anthony. Nothing could be more illogical than risking everything for a dalliance with a rake -- even one who's trying to behave himself. Yet nothing could be more tempting....

Sabrina Jeffries is one of those authors that I thought I should love and I just could never quite figure out why I hadn't really connected with her writing style and I was beginning to think that I never would really connect. (Eloisa James is another author I think this about). Then I read Beware of a Scot's Revenge and I was really surprised by how much I liked it, but then I didn't want to get that excited in case it was a once-off, but I am glad to say that it was not because this one was great!

Having an experienced rake give a virginal young lady lessons in how to catch a husband is one of the standard story lines of historical romance, along with secret babies and marriages of convenience. What Sabrina Jeffries has done with this book is to take that standard and give it a twist. Anthony Dalton, Lord Norcourt, is a well known rakehell with a penchant for widows. When he needs to try and save his niece Tessa from his very scary aunt and uncle who currently have guardianship of her, he arrives at Mrs Harris' school looking for a place for her there. There he meets Miss Madeline Prescott who is something of a blue stocking and naturalist. Given that the school is currently not taking new students, and especially not at the request of one of those pesky rakes that headmistress Mrs Harris detests so much, Madeline comes up with an idea to have a new teacher at the school - a rake who can teach their students what to look out for when they go out into society - Lord Norcourt.

What isn't clear to either Mrs Harris or Lord Norcourt is that Madeline has her own reasons for wanting to spend time with him. He thinks he can give her a few lessons in pleasure but she has decided that he can arrange things so that she can meet one of his scientist friends who she believes can help save her doctor father from a scandal surrounding his use of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) on a young woman who subsequently died.

With both Anthony and Madeline having their own agendas the opportunities to spend time together are quickly mounting up as is the attraction between the two of them. With Madeline determined to attend one of the notorious nitrous oxide gas parties to try and meet up with Sir Humphrey and Anthony having decided that Madeline must not be a virgin because of the whiff of scandal that he suspects already surrounds her, the opportunities for half truths to be told and for misunderstandings leads to a night of passion that neither party will forget any time soon.

I really enjoyed this whole story, but there are two things that stopped me from giving this book a perfect score. One is that with the ending, there had been so much build up around the scandal that Madeline's father had been involved in that the way that it was resolved seemed to be an easy way out. The other thing was the hero's tendency to call his penis 'bad boy' and not in a fun way. It did make sense in terms of the way he thought of himself but it did get a bit old after a while.

I am looking forward to reading more in this series, but if I have to be honest, the one that I am waiting for is when we get Charlotte Harris' story and we get to find out exactly who the mysterious Cousin Michael really is and get to see the sparks fly when they meet in real life and not just through their correspondence!

Only a Duke Will Do by Sabrina Jeffries

"You can't avoid him forever, Louisa. Just tell him you're not interested, and put an end to it."
—Mrs. Charlotte Harris, headmistress

Marry? Never! It would end Louisa North's work with her ladies reform group—and truth be told, she likes her independence very much, despite her royal father's protests. So when Simon Tremaine, the dashing Duke of Foxmoor whom she once loved—and had exiled from England—returns bent on marrying her, she's skeptical. Does he truly care for her, or does he simply want revenge? It's difficult to resist Simon's dangerous charms, because the fire between them still burns as hot as ever. But when his ulterior motive for marriage is exposed, along with the deeply buried secrets of his past, Louisa vows to make him pay ... and the price will be his heart.

I have wanted to read Louisa and Simon's story ever since it was the background story in To Pleasure a Prince. The main couple in that book were Louisa's brother Marcus and Simon's sister Regina, and as such, they both play pretty major roles in this book as well! Without wanting to give too much away Simon broke Louisa's heart, and in this book, he has now returned to London following a successful governorship in India seven years down the track.

The instant that he sees Louisa he knows that she still affects him, despite her protestations. Simon is determined that he will have Louisa as his wife, despite the fact that he knows that he is incapable of loving her, as a result of the bizarre training that his statesman grandfather gave him when he was a young man. The fact that her father (who happens to be the King) is prepared to back his political aims should he be successful in both marrying her, and also in stopping her from her participation in her political group is a bonus.

For the most part I really enjoyed this book, although there was an awful lot of politics in this book, and at time they did get in the way of the love story. For example, there is more than one scene where the amorous activities between the two were used to trade off promises relating to the various political activities that the two of them were undertaking. Having said that, the work that Louisa was involved in in terms of prison reforms was very interesting in it's own right, and was borrowed directly from the pages of history.

Simon's search for documents relating to his cousin dovetailed really nicely with the novella in the School for Heiresses novella which I read earlier this year. Now I need to decide if I want to buy the next book in this series, because my library doesn't have it!

I think I will!

Rating 4/5

Never Seduce a Scoundrel by Sabrina Jeffries

Bestselling author Sabrina Jeffries's enticing new series introduces the spirited graduates of Mrs. Harris's School for Young Ladies — unconventional heiresses who are more than matches for society's most irresistible rogues....

"Be careful, Amelia — you know how reckless you can be!"

— Mrs. Charlotte Harris, headmistress

Lady Amelia Plume has many admirers — it's too bad they're all fortune hunters and fops who can't provide the exotic adventures she seeks. But the ballrooms of Mayfair have become much more appealing since the arrival of Major Lucas Winter, an American with a dark past and a dangerous air. Lucas is brash, arrogant — and scandalously tempting. Every thrilling kiss sparks hotter desire, yet Amelia suspects that Lucas has a hidden motive in wooing her. And she intends to discover it, by any means necessary....

This is the first book in current series by Sabrina Jeffries which will feature young ladies who have attended Miss Harris' school that has been nicknamed The School for Heiresses. I do like this as a set up for a series - much better than having a series with a brother, three sisters and two cousins or whatever! It gives the author a chance to write stories about completely different characters, and really only have the loosest of connections between them, without losing the cohesiveness of the series. The School for Heiresses anthology that I read earlier this year demonstrated this flexibility really well.

Lady Amelia Plume is desperate for adventure, but when it comes along in the form of Major Lucas Winter, could it be more adventure than she can cope with? I did like this book, but as I sit here trying to figure out why, I'm not sure I can say why.

We'll start with a couple of things - initially I really liked the interactions between Amelia and Lucas. Their repartee was witty, and yet still manages to be serious and fun at the same time. I liked Lucas' tortured past which used a little known episode of English-American history as the basis (well not for him, just the way it's written), and his reactions to certain situations made perfect sense!

I didn't mind Amelia either. She seemed quite intelligent, although she could turn on the giggly society maiden at will when necessary as well!

I liked the set up that was done for at least one more book down the track, although I am hopeful that Mrs Harris gets to fall in love with her faithful letter writer/source of information! Can I just say I have been waiting for the book that is next in this series for me since I read the Royal Brotherhood books. Saying so is completely irrelevant to this review, but that's okay!

But...and there is a but....I am not 100% sure about a couple of things that happened in this book! Firstly, there was the whole obsessive suitor routine. It kind of built up for a little bit, and then was solved. Other than ensuring that our hero and heroine got from point A to point B, that whole aspect of the plot was kind of unnecessary. The second one was one of the major scenes in the book towards the end of it between Lucas and Amelia that was very intense, but maybe a bit too cold and calculated on both sides for most of the scene that I am not sure was really necessary.

If it wasn't for those two scenes I would probably have given this 4.5/5 but instead I am marking it down to 4.

I am definitely looking forward to the next book though...wait...I already said that!

Rating 4/5