Is It in the Water or in the Air? by Leah

Is It in the Water or in the Air? by Leah - October 2020 Scholarship Essay

Everyday life became impossible for Ruby after the killer rain started. As a teenager, life without one's parents' shelter can be a rude awakening for some. However, it is more than that for Ruby because her mother, stepbrother, and stepfather are dead, and virus free drinkable water is hard to come by. Nevertheless, Ruby still has hope for her father across the country in London. She hopes he is one of the 0.27%, and she will stop at nothing to get to him.
The book's summary does no justice to the rollercoaster of emotions and the eerie realness of the book H2O by Virginia Bergin. This book has been my favorite book in the year 2020 so far for a multitude of reasons. This book falls into the sci-fi genre, particularly sci-fi, aimed at a teenage and young adult audience. This particular combination is something that I frequently gravitate towards. The book is also explicitly written for a teenage and young adult audience, in which I fall perfectly.
The variety of awkward teenage experiences, unexpected plot turns, and my personal favorite, the peppering of teenage romance throughout the novel make H2O all the more appealing.
However, the component that decided H2O's first place on the leaderboard in my mind was the striking resemblance to our current situation in the real world. COVID has wreaked havoc on the glode, spreading rapidly through the air, unfortunately devastating our population. The virus in the water in the book, H2O, has an eerily realistic parallel to our new reality amidst COVID. While reading this book in quarantine, I caught myself fearing the rain outside my bedroom window, thinking it would give me COVID. These incorrectly informed fears that I was experiencing were due to the connections I established as I immersed myself more in-depth into this novel.
Apart from the situation in H2O, I connected to the main character Ruby. She, like myself, is a teenage girl navigating an easily caught and unknown virus. Before the rain, Ruby was similar to me pre-COVID with her ambitious social endeavors, interests in unattainable male counterparts, and an obsessive connection with her smartphone. The links that I made with H2O and the parallels that I found to those in my new everyday life made this book, unlike others.
The more connections that I can make with a story, the more I like it. I had anticipated these connections while also keeping in mind the genre when I chose this book. Yet the added romance and the numerous parallels far surpassed my expectations, earning my highest praises.
The realistic plot, the relatable characters, and my choice genre are, without a doubt, the reason I chose H2O by Virginia Bergin to be my favorite book of 2020.