Evaluation regarding One School, One Book

Our school has chosen the book "Life As We Knew It" by Susan Beth Pfeffer as our One School, One Book assignment. I would not recommend this book, in any fashion to any person. This book's plot structure is more than a running tab of events than anything. Although it's presented in the style of journal entries, there is no uniqueness to it. The plot is entirely predictable. Some may argue that the character's are well developed, but for this type of story they are about as predictable as the plot. While reading this book, I was reminded of the movie The Day after Tomorrow. Just another typical pre-apocolyptic story where the main focus is set on one family hoping to survive the series of catastrophic events.
One part of this book that really gets to me is the structure, on all different aspects. One being the diary-style format. These journal entries do not provide as great of detail as would be liked. The sentence structure for the most part is not the greatest, but the lack of properness could really bug a person. for example, "No Horton. No word from Jonny. Mom and I didn't talk. Matt isn't talking much either." (pg 132) The choppiness of the sentence drives me mad. Sure, it adds to the diary like atmosphere of the writing, but the lack of detail proves it to be a waste of a journal entry more than anything.
This book overall did not keep me entertained. The character development was a dreaded progress that was vague with detail. The characters did not really progress through the story in any sort of specific direction. It seemed like as the events were rolling through, the more the main character, Miranda, seemed to complain. For example, when she exclaims " 'You're damn right I'm self-pitying,' I shouted right back at her. 'Why shouldn't I be? It's bad enough my life is like this and I have no idea if I'm going to survive." (pg 211) There is really no point to this complaint, because her feelings change later down the line. This book should not have been chosen for the One School, One Book project.