Very seldom do you pick up a book and end up reimagining your own life in response to it. It is not often that by reading a book you begin to rethink how your life would be without some things you take for granted. For example: water. What would you do if water became contaminated? If you couldn’t touch it, drink it, or get near it? How far would you be willing to go to survive? And what -or whom- would you be willing to sacrifice?

H2O by Virginia Bergin is the story of Ruby, a teenage girl whose life is just about to reach perfection until it comes: the killer rain. At first, they don’t know how or why it’s happening – or how to stop it. All they know is that people are dying. An announcement goes out on the news: it’s in the rain. Tiny water-loving bugs are in the rain and they love human blood. One by one the people she loves are taken away from her, until the only person left is her dad. The only problem is that she hasn’t seen him in years and he lives across a body of contaminated water. So by taking matters into her own hands she decides to pursue the only person she still cares about; a decision that may cost her life.

This book helped me remember what it is like to put yourself in the shoes of a character. There were a multitude of times when I found myself thinking “No! Do this!” or “No, don’t do that!” or “Be careful!” or “Remember the water!”. Books should be interactive and take you on a journey. When you read a good book, you feel what the characters feel. You’re anxious with them, sad with them, happy with them, relieved with them, and loved with them. You find a character you relate to and understand them on a more personal level. The element of danger that this book has makes the experience even more intense and turns it into something that expands farther than the world inside the pages, into the real world. It makes you think: what would I do if that happened to me?

H2O is the story of a girl whose world has been shattered and is trying to pick up the pieces. On some level we can all relate to that, because everyone has something they are trying to fix. The only major difference is the presence of killer rain. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in escaping to a new world for a few minutes a day. Or someone who is really interested in thinking about the end of the world. So if the apocalypse comes, just know that those who read this book will be the wiser.

Happy reading, and remember, don’t get wet.