Carbon Diaries 2017 by Saci Lloyd

Remember what I said about Carbon Diaries 2015 being Life As We Knew It Lite? 2017 changes that. Dark, brutal, gruesome, confusing, frightening ... Laura Brown's world got crazier.
You would think about two years of carbon rationing the UK would have settled somewhat, people would be making do as best they could, and while that is happening, unrest, anger, fear, and discrimination are building, making the world scarier. Laura's trying to get through university, but protesting students are being arrested and beaten and kicked out of university, so she escapes to her parents' home (who moved outside of London) for the spring term and early summer.
The Dirty Angels (Laura's band) are still at it, though Adi is more interested in revolution and fighting than the band. So, Sam (one of Laura's classmates) ends up being a part of the band and when the Dirty Angels get to be part of a European tour, Sam comes with. But France, if possible, is in even more chaos than the UK and when the band is around on election day, a very right wing party is elected, and so the band splits to Italy.
Only to learn that Adi has malaria in Sicily. Laura goes. But it's not easy.
When the group finally makes it back to London, Laura agrees to settle into her university work (there are no jobs out there, so she might as well get an education) and playing with the band.
London explodes with frustration, aggravation, and protests. The army and the government are fighting their own people and after Laura and friends have been lying safely hidden at Kieran's, they decide it's time to be a part of the fight to stand up for what's wrong. It goes amazingly poorly.
Definitely darker than 2015--that book is more about the environment and the side effects of everything going wrong with carbon rationing, 2017 is about people who have finally had enough and want to change the government, which hasn't changed with the changing world. An intense story, and I'm glad that Laura made it out (for now) ok. Changed, but ok.

The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd

We all know 1) I'm a sucker for books written in the diary format and 2) I'm a sucker for dystopian novels and so The Carbon Diaries 2015 was perfect fit.
The dystopia part wasn't a huge role, the book is meant to take place in modern Britain (and only a few years away from the present) but with a few quirks (or yet to happen events) thrown in. The Great Storm has left the global community thinking that maybe some changes need to be made to how people live.
The UK is the first to make changes by rationing carbon in January 2015. So Laura Brown keeps a diary of what's happening during the year, from the extreme snow to extreme rain to extreme drought (is there any other kind?) back to extreme rain. The weather is just one aspect of crazy during 2015 and Laura just wants everything to be "normal". She wants to play in her band the Dirty Angels, she wants to crush on the boy next door, she wants to pass her exams, she wants her older sister Kim to stop being an evil witch, and she just wants her parents to be normal.
The book reminded me of Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It: the world is going along happily until some extreme event knocks everything out of whack and it's the story of one teenager coping with the changes. Saci Lloyd leaves some humor in The Carbon Diaries 2015, which makes it not as intense as Pfeffer's books. Now the moon didn't get knocked closer to earth, it's just global warming (just? yikes), but the government's plan to put people on carbon rationing changes aspects of daily life: how much you can use the computer, watch TV, take hot showers, cook, all the basic stuff you take for granted. Lloyd does a good job of showing the activities that change that we normally wouldn't think about (Laura's mom can't drive her car as often, Kim is missing her gap year because it's too expensive to fly, students are re-thinking education and careers) and increasing the feeling of desperation that slowly rises amongst the family and the community at large. The snow is frightening (people dying from the cold, no food getting to the UK) and then it all melts and there's relief. The rain is intense (better than the snow) and goes on for days and days and days, and when the sun finally comes out, there's relief. The drought is frightening (people dying from the heat, the city turning off access to water), with no one thinking to save the rain that drenched the people in the spring, and when it finally rains there's relief. The relief is always short-lived because there's some other disaster that's coming closer.
It's amazing how "normal" Laura's life continues to be--she goes to school, plays with her band, fights with her parents, takes her exams, sleeps late on breaks--though cracks in the normalcy peer out from time to time, like when the school has an assembly on what to do during a riot. The diary format moves the book along at a quick and easy to read pace, Laura is a great character struggling with being a teenager and this great change occurring in the world at large. She's easy to relate to and Lloyd does a great job of making some of the usual stuff of teenage life remain "usual". It's a great book, especially for those not as interested in the intense world Pfeffer creates in her books. The Carbon Diaries 2015 is a good book to read after Pfeffer's books. You need a little hope somewhere.
I just started The Carbon Diaries 2017 and I'm interested to see where this one will take me ... check for a review soon!