How I Live Now is an impressive craft, not only by society's standards (as the three awards it has won; The Michael L. Printz Award, The Guardian Award for Children's Fiction, and The Branford Boase Award for a First Novel, will prove) but also by my standards.

The protagonist of the story is Daisy, a very observant fifteen year old from New York. She is sent overseas to the English countryside by her distant father and her stepmother, Davina the Diabolical, to live with cousins she has never known until now. The cousins, Osbert, Edmond, Isaac, and Piper, as well as Aunt Penn, all seem to possess subtle psychic and/or supernatural abilities that allow them to be linked with the quiet world around them. Aunt Penn is called away for a relatively short period of time, and with no adults, their isolated home becomes more like a fairytale than ever before. Until war breaks out and England is attacked and swarming with minions of an unnamed, vastly unknown enemy.

My personal opinion of the book? It's become one of my favorites. Rosoff's form of writing is captivating and entertaining, and sometimes runs across the page like an overexcited child. The sentences are the size of paragraphs, because the reader is dropped right in the middle of Daisy's method of thought procession. Five out of five stars. This book is impeccably poignant, and come the last page, satisfying.