With eco-thrillers rapidly becoming the new vampire romance, it takes a special one to stand out. Laura Brown’s diary of her life in the year after the Great Storm, the year England rations carbon use, transcends the genre’s didacticism. While London suffers floods, droughts, riots and disease, Laura’s self-centeredness—she just wants to play with her band and date cute Ravi from next door—keeps her story grounded. The everyday matter of young-adult fiction, from dating to parental divorce to failing grades, are equally meaningful when set against a backdrop of cholera and black markets. The diary format contributes to readers’ sense of the frenetic pace of Laura’s collapsing world, and the solidly realized London setting provides contrast to the Blitz Spirit of World War II. While the adults of London revert to crazed, self-obsessed philosophies, the teenagers just try to create a present and a future in a world destroyed. None of these Londoners is perfect, least of all Laura, but in a hellish year they all learn to get over themselves. Enough, at least. (Science fiction. 13-15)
