How I Live Now

by Meg Rosoff

To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.

• ISBN10: 0786288787
• ISBN13: 9780786288786
• Publish Date: 1 August 2006 (first published 1 January 2004)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 20 July 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Thorndike Press
• Edition: Large type / large print edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 239
• Language: English

Reviews

[Bianca]

I was dying, of course, but then we all are. Every day, in perfect increments, I was dying of loss.

[boghunden]

This isn't a bad book. It's just not my kind of book.

I was very bored throughout the entire book. I didn't care about the characters, the plot or the writing.

To start with the worst first:
The writing annoyed me so much! It's entirely written from Daisy's POV and there's no dialogue in the book at all. The punctuations are also somewhat not there. It's annoying, really. It didn't do anything for me.

The characters didn't mean anything to me - I didn't care for them one bit. Except the last 20 pages - I really liked Edmond in those pages, but that's not nearly enough to make this a good reading experience for me.
I kind of wanted a lot of characterdevelopment to take place, because who doesn't change when there's a war going on? And every young person goes through a change at some point. I just didn't see it in this story. Perhaps the book was just too short for this kind of story?

As far as the plot goes, I was somewhat annoyed that Daisy's father - who send her off to live with her aunt - called to check on her when the war started, but the aunt who's supposed to now be the responsible one, she takes off to Norway and doesn't call home to check on Daisy or her own kids. Wtf?! I thought that okay, maybe she's dead, but it turns out she wasn't - not for the first couple of months at least.
Everything felt forced, it happened way too fast. I didn't even get to know the characters until the book was over. Way too short, but then again, good for me, because I didn't really care about this book.

I'm sure there are lots of people out there who'll enjoy this book, sadly I'm just not one of them.

[nightingalereads]

3.5 stars

[Nessa Luna]

Read this review, and many more on my blog October Tune!

Honestly, after seeing the trailer (of the movie based on this book) I thought the book might be good. I had tried reading it before, but I thought my ebook version was a bit weird, because the dialogue was all wibbly-wobbly. But it turned out that the dialogue was actually written like that. No quotation marks, no commas to indicate where the dialogue started and stopped (well sometimes there was), nothing.

The way the story was written, with Daisy telling that she was going to write down how the war changed her life, reminded me a bit of Tomorrow When the War Began (and also with the whole unknown enemy thing); but that was probably just a coincidence. I liked the story, apart from the whole incest thing. Really, why do people think that it’s a good idea to write about incest? Why? If you want your main character to fall in love with someone, you can just make up that they’re a friend of your cousin, not your cousin! They’re fictional, anything is possible! You can make up anything! Okay, of course, they can make up that their main character fell in love with their cousin but why?!

A lot of things were quite unclear to me, for example there was this conversation between Daisy and Major McEvoy, and then she said something like ‘eleven letters starting with E’, and I spend the rest of the book trying to think of an eleven lettered word that started with an E. It was probably mentioned before in the book, but who remembers every word mentioned in a book? That’s right, no one.
There was also a part where someone (I’m not gonna mention names, because spoilers) was shot, and this other guy started getting out of the car, and apparently, he was shot too. I had to read that part THREE times before I understood what happened. At first, I just thought they drove off without the second guy, but it turned out he had died as well.

I told myself I’d read fifty pages, and see if it had improved after that. It didn’t, but I read on because I’m like that (I don’t like leaving books unfinished). At the end, Daisy got a phone call from someone, and then apparently ‘part zero’ ended, because after that we got ‘part one’ (it might have been that my e-book was wibbly-wobbly and part one was actually supposed to be called part two, but I have no idea). Part one was written a lot better than the rest of the book, with proper quotation marks, because apparently Daisy was a grown-up now and grown-ups write properly. Honestly, if the book had been written better, and if they hadn’t included the whole incest thing, I might have liked the book more. Books about wars (fictional or non-fictional ones) have always interested me, but this one was actually a bit ‘boring’ (not very action packed until I was at page eighty or so). I’m just really a fan of action-packet stories.

Still, I’m glad I read the book, because then I’ll probably understand the movie a bit better (If they ever decide to play it in the Netherlands, because IMDb hasn’t got a Dutch date, hmpff).

[elvinagb]

Fifteen year old Daisy is sent by her father and stepmother from her home in New York to live with cousins and an aunt she has never met in England. When the England is attacked and occupied by an unknown enemy and Daisy's aunt is out of the county, the cousins find themselves alone and left to look after themselves. Until the war finds them and Daisy's story becomes one of separation, fear, isolation and death.
This book was written in 2004 but the themes and backdrop reflect how we live now. Daisy is a funny and quirky teen who has to navigate this new life and like her cousins adapt to the terrifying situation they find themselves living in.
This is brilliant novel and an absolute must read.

[ibeforem]

This YA story of children left to fend for themselves after the outbreak of a war has a distinct post-apocalyptic feel to it. I think this is mostly due to the rural countryside setting, lack of adults, and the “faceless” enemy. You never find out what really happens here other than The Occupation, but that’s secondary to the story of Daisy and her cousins and their struggle to survive.

Daisy is the narrator here, and the writing style is true to the uncertain voice of a teenager — the slightly rambling, run-on sentences and narrow worldview are spot on. I liked Daisy, even though she starts out pretty selfish and more than slightly screwed-up. By the end of the story she is a completely different person, but the world is also a completely different place.

I think this story had the potential to be too much — too horrific, too gory, too heroic, too sad, too uncomfortable, too unbelievable. Instead, it was just right.