it’s a well known fact i’m a wuss. i blame it on my overactive imagination that takes a tiny seed of truth (a pineapple, a monster in the closet, a murderer upstairs while i’m babysitting, an alien, a man hiding in the dark corner, a ghost) and expands it until i am shaking and crying and LIVING MY WORST NIGHTMARE. knowing this about myself has helped me to be proactive about this over the years. i’ve stopped watching scary movies. heck, i’ve even stopped watching scary movie previews. when commercials come on (yes, i know. i watch commercials. i don’t have a DVR. i’m so ancient), i can hit the mute button faster than the first note of the scary music can finish.
i don’t have a finely tuned response towards scary books, though. sure, i know not to read anything with stephen king on the title, but what about one that says susan beth pfeffer?
LIFE AS WE KNEW IT is easily one of the scariest things i’ve ever read because IT COULD HAPPEN. (it could totally occur within the next ten years. or fifteen. or two. even with all the technology available today, weathermen are still wrong A LOT, so what’s to say an astronomer or NASA expert couldn’t be way off as well?) this book is also one of the most mesmerizing things i’ve ever read. i couldn’t stop reading, couldn’t put it down, actually, wait, i did put it down once when i went to check the pantry to make sure there were enough canned goods in there. (read it, you’ll see.) i read this two christmases ago and i STILL think about this book on a weekly basis, which means it should be on my top ten list of great books, but for some reason, i never consider it. probably because it scares the bejeezus out of me and i do my best to forget it, but IT WON’T LET ME. just when i think i’m over it, something like the supermoon happens and i’m right back in the trenches with miranda. this doesn’t make it a bad book. it just makes it a bad book for those that are wusses like me.
although, honestly, even that’s a lie. (see what scary books do to me? they make me lie!) because as a “writer”, this is the kind of book i want to write. no, no, not a scary one, but rather one that drapes itself over your shoulders and covers you from head to toe and wriggles into your brain so you can NEVER FORGET. NEVER. EVER. EVER. NEVER. NOPE.
in fact, i think it makes it my next recommendation of what YOU should read.
note: there are two other companion novels in this series: THE DEAD AND THE GONE (book 2) and THE WORLD WE LIVE IN (book 3), but i didn’t realize that at the time, so i read book 3 before book 2 and was a bit confused at some of the missing details. i actually haven’t even read book 2 yet. hmm, while you read book 1, i’ll read book 2. deal?
Abigail Mumford 