Charming at best. Pointless at worst.

Meg Rosoff's 'How I Live Now' is being marketed as a crossover novel. However, the crossover genre - which seems to be the bastard offspring of the Potter phenomenon and Mark Haddon - is a harder nut to crack than Rosoff seems capable of. For while this novel clearly has elements that would make it appealing to kids, there's little enough in it for adults. The fantasy level is depressingly poor (compared to writers such as Pullman, and even J K Rowling)... and the skewed-reality element - worse still (especially in comparison with someone like Haddon).
Basically Daisy, a fifteen year old American anorexic is booted off by father and wicked stepmother to live in an idyllic English country setting, with her strange and wonderful cousins (with assorted pets), when an unlikely war (World War 2 with terrorists and mystery) breaks out leaving them cut off, separated and evacuated. However, Daisy, rather like a misplaced and underfed Shakespearean heroine, rises to the challenge. And before the novel is out has saved at least one cousin, trekked along some footpaths, and started eating again, not to mention dallying in incest and blackberry picking, rather in equal quantities.
But basically I was bored. There simply wasn't enough in it for an adult imagination. And the daftness of the whole thing actually suggested we were heading towards some sort of Daisy-awakes-in-a-New-York hospital 'and it was all just a dream'. But even when this didn't happen, I didn't feel pleasantly surprise, because the end then became even more far-fetched.
Issues undealt with, charm undercut with silliness, Daisy being more or less the most insufferable girl in children's fiction to date, and my feeling that it takes more than a little freestyle writing to make a book like this clever, combined to make this an utter disappointment for me. Would be interested in seeing what a 13 year old thought of it though...