Book Review: How I Live Now

 

Quick sypnosis from Goodreads:
Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy. As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it’s a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy’s uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way. 

My review: 

*Contains mild spoilers*


This book will be left un-rated until I figure out if this book was a brilliant masterpiece or a piece of plain rubbish.

Reading this novel was like going to through a whirlwind of emotions, each passing

over time yet still staying strong in my memory.

In the beginning, I was annoyed. The writing style really got me off track. There were no quotation marks when a character spoke, a lot of Random Capitalization, and the sentences seemed to continue on and on and on, almost like a paragraph. And I didn't really liked Daisy. She seemed very ignorant, stubborn, and heartless, as seen in this little excerpt:

"No matter how much you put on a sad expression and talked about how awful it was that all those people were killed and what about democracy and the Future of Our Great Nation the fact that none of us kids said out loud was that WE DIDN'T REALLY CARE. Most of the people who got killed were either old like our parents so they'd had good lives already, or people who worked in banks and were pretty boring anyway, or other people we didn't know"

But as the chapters passed, I started to see a new side of this book. The writing style actually suited the story. It felt rushed, yet the author managed to grab all the important information and fit them in the text while keeping the "hurried" pace. The writing style also revealed a lot about Daisy. She was very observant, noticing little details in the personality of other characters, but at the same time she seemed very naive. Aware of what was happening, but processing it in her mind in a different way, I think.

But still, sometimes I felt like some very important parts were too rushed, as if they didn't really matter. But they did.

Arriving to the middle of the novel, everything I resented seemed to have vanished. Daisy changed into someone more mature, more mindful. Along with that, the writing also changed. Actually, during the whole story, the writing style changed as Daisy grew and developed as a character, which I found very brilliant. The story, although disturbing at some parts, was starting to captivate me, and I began to understand the novel.

However, the fantastic middle part can't overshadow the bizarre ending. This book seemed to revolve around war, survival, and murders, but never have I thought that the ending would be focused on a love story. Edmond, Daisy's younger cousin and love subject, was definitely mentioned in the beginning, but not to the point where I thought he'd be a key part of the story. Yet the ending was pure Edmond and Daisy. It was both confusing and disappointing.

And a lot of times in the book, I didn't have a clue on what was going on. The lack of explanations in some parts of the story really frustrated me, and I wished I knew more details about the war.

As you can see, my journey with this novel has been overwhelming. I felt like I was there with Daisy and her cousin Piper, as they traveled across England to find a safe place to stay in. When they were hungry, I felt hungry; when they were tired, I felt deprived of energy; when they saw rotting dead bodies, I myself pictured the carcasses in such vivid details that I could almost smell the stench radiating from them.

Odd, disturbing, daring, honest... "How I Live Now" may not have been perfect or even close to flawless, but its story will stay with me long after I turned the last page.