This books name is How I Live Now written by Meg Rosoff. It was published by Wendy Lamb Books, in 2004 in New York. This is also science fictional book. I think I keep getting lucky when it comes to these book reviews. I truly didn’t think it would be great having my book type already chosen for me, but every time I pick a book, I end up getting one that is very enjoyable. How I Live Now was also very captivating. With a lexile of 1,620 I can tell why it’s an award winning book. Rosoff has an intelligent, detailed way of writing. The main character, Daisy, goes to live with cousins she’s never met in England. She falls in love, a war starts and slowly all she ever had starts to fizzle away.
How I Live Now is about a fifteen year-old girl whose father and “evil” stepmother send her to live with her cousins in England. To make matters worse, she starts falling in love with her cousin Edmond. To make matters terrible, a war has just begun, leaving the only adult supervision (the careless Aunt Penn) stranded in another country on business. As Daisy got off the plane in England, she knew living with her cousins would be something she’d never experienced. “….I’m looking and looking and thinking Oh great, I’m going to be abandoned at the airport so that’s two countries they don’t want me in, when I notice everyone’s gone except this kid who comes up to me and says You must be Daisy. And when I look relieved he does too and says I’m Edmond.” No, it wasn’t love at first sight. In fact, it took Daisy a while to warm up to Edmond, but he sure had some very evident characteristics. Besides being a fourteen year-old smoker and eligible to drive, Edmond seems to be able to answer Daisy’s questions without her having to even ask them. When Daisy gets to her new temporary home, she meets her other three cousins: Piper (her favorite), Osbert (the smartest) and Isaac (the oldest). Piper and Daisy become as close as sisters, Isaac never talks to Daisy, and all Osbert talks about is war. The kids live out in the country, so when Aunt Penn leaves for a business trip, she thinks the kids will be okay. Then, the day after Aunt Penn leaves, they hear about bombings in a London train station on the radio. No one is worried, but after a while the war starts to catch up with them out in the middle of nowhere. Communication is lost; the girls get separated from the boys and slowly, all of Daisy’s new friends and family members start to disappear. To survive, Daisy has to step up and be a leader to Piper and even grown men. She also has to find a way to reunite with her other cousins.

I think Meg Rosoff has a very distinctive way of writing. It’s detailed and fascinating to read. Being that, she is a licensed author, I can’t say that her sentences are run-on, but that’s probably the best way to describe it because she has a way of putting everything, no matter how long the idea, into one sentence, making some of them a whole paragraph long (kind of like that). Another thing I like about her writing is that it seems like every sentence has a sort of double-meaning. You can read something and get an idea of how Daisy is feeling, but then keep reading and get a totally different feeling. For example, the quote from the beginning of the review goes on to say: “…..Now let me tell you what he looks like before forget because it’s not exactly what you’d expect from your average fourteen year-old what with a CIGARETTE and hair that looked like he cut it himself with a hatchet in the dead of night, but aside from that he’s exactly like some kind of mutt…” Right here I’m thinking that Edmond isn’t giving Daisy a very astounding first impression, but it goes on to say: “you know the ones you see at the dog shelter who are kind of hopeful and sweet and put their nose straight into your hand when they meet you with a certain kind of dignity and you know you’re going to take him home? Well that’s him.” The rest of the quote tells me that Daisy might have a satisfactory first impression of Edmond.

All these reviews have opened my eyes to the fact that there is more than just one type of writing. I can enjoy books in more genres than just realistic fiction (my favorite). A lot like Daisy in the book, I have to learn to adapt to changes and accept that they can turn out for better, and that’s what I’m doing; as Daisy said in the book “That’s how I live now.”