How I Live Now


Wendy Lamb Books

Meg Rosoff



Random House inc., 2004, 194pp., $7.99





ISBN 0-446-31078-6







“I'm looking and everyone's leaving and there's no signal on my phone and I'm thinking Oh Great, I'm going to be abandoned at the airport so that's two countries they don't want me in……” Daisy's summer has changed her life. Daisy, fifteen, has just gotten off the plane in London from New York. Her father sent her away to her cousins and her aunt Penn that she has never met before, while her dad went off somewhere with Daisy's stepmother. Now Daisy has found her cousin Edmond and is getting a ride home from her fourteen-year-old cousin who she soon falls in love with.
As soon as Daisy has started to settle in, her aunt Penn is going away on vacation to Norway. After a few weeks spending time with her four cousins and getting to know them more war suddenly breaks out. The two girls, Daisy and Piper (Daisy's cousin) get split apart from Daisy's three boy cousins; Edmond, fourteen, Isaac, fourteen, and Osbert, sixteen.
It has been a struggle for Daisy to keep herself and Piper alive throughout the war. It has especially been hard for Daisy to be without Edmond and finding a hidden place to spend the night and to find food for her and Piper. During the last few months of the war they struggled the most. They had very little food to eat and had to collect rainwater to live.
Meg Rossoff was born in Boston and went from New York to London, where she is currently living with her family. If you like books where you really feel like you are in the story and there watching each scene you would like the way this book is laid out.
How I Live Now is a great novel filled with survival, action, hope, and courage. This novel would be more geered toward middle schoolers. If you are a middle schooler who likes sharp endings with action, mysterious and suspense, you will like this book. I humongously recommend this book to people who like books that are razor sharp straightforward.