“Every war has turning points and every person too.”
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.
A riveting and astonishing story.
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.
A riveting and astonishing story.
My Rating: 3/5
The book starts with Daisy going to live with her aunt and cousins Edmund, Isaac, Osbert and Piper. It is also alluded to numerous times that Daisy has an eating disorder so this book does tackle much deeper topics.
At first I found this book really hard to read. It is told almost entirely through inner monologue and really long sentences. The lack of speech marks is what bothered me the most.
The protagonist Daisy was not easy to like or get along with. She was a typical moody teenager.
The book is just under 200 pages long but it is so incredibly slow paced that it felt much longer.
For that reason I definitely liked the second half of the book more than the first half. The second half focuses on Daisy and her 9 year old cousin Piper's quest for survival after they are separated from the male cousins (Piper's brothers) after the outbreak of war.
At first Daisy and her cousins are very naïve about the war. When the British Army take them away, separating them is when the book significantly picks up the pace.
The romance was another aspect I didn't particularly enjoy because Daisy happens to fall in love with her cousin. They never even really acknowledged what they were doing was wrong. This whole interaction made me cringe.
The ending was rather abrupt and I did not like it at all but then I am not sure how else to end a book with this type of topic.
For a book about war, I thought that Daisy was left rather sheltered. There was only 2 or 3 moments throughout the book that she saw the real traumatic nature of war. My view was further solidified when we are briefly told Edmund's way of life during the war. I can't help but think this book could have been a lot better had it not been a young adult novel.
I also watched the movie adaptation after reading this book. I was unable to watch the movie in one sitting because it was just as slowly paced as the book. I did really love Piper in the movie though, she really encapsulated the youthful innocence with a war going on around her.
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