I spent a while considering how I would rate this book, but finally decided on a full 5/5 rating, and here's why:

It troubles me greatly that so many readers can't see past the unconventional relationship between our protagonist and her cousin, because it so wholly isn't what the book is about. That's the only real downfall of "How I live Now"--unfortunately, Meg Rosoff seemed to target her book towards an audience too immature to realize that this novel is a novel about SURVIVAL. It's a novel about how people change when faced with hardship and how people can come together in the oddest of ways. It's about family. It's about love. It's about hate. Meg Rosoff has a unique gift of just giving the reader the bare bones of a story--that is to say, no surnames are given, little background about the characters is revealed in depth, the enemy is referred to solely as just that, "The Enemy"--and still making a profound impact. This is a novel about people and our determination to survive even in the face of hopelessness.

Stylistically, this book is stunning. The prose is insightful and puzzling, but necessary given the circumstances of the novel. Finally, a book which reads as if the narrator is actually recalling events, rather than the artificially produced recollection of events and conversations, verbatim, which we have grown so used to.

I sincerely hope that people reading this book will start focusing on the beauty of the story--the prose, the characters, the structure which is at once remarkably simplistic and stunningly complex--and stop focusing on details which are not entirely pertinent to the story at large.