Book Review: The Rest of Us Just Live Here
The Rest of Us Just Live Here is another Bookcon Advance Reader’s Copy.
The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
Release Date: October 6, 2015
The description provided by the publisher:
A new YA novel from novelist Patrick Ness, author of the Carnegie Medal- and Kate Greenaway Medal-winning A Monster Calls and the critically acclaimed Chaos Walking trilogy, The Rest of Us Just Live Here is a bold and irreverent novel that powerfully reminds us that there are many different types of remarkable.
What if you aren’t the Chosen One? The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death?
What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again.
Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.
Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions.
My Review:
The prospective Ness decided to write in was a very interesting choice. In a lot of YA fiction you get unrealistic situations happening to the narrator and said narrator then has to save the world. It was a new experience reading from someone who has no direct influence, interaction, or involvement with the “strange” happenings around town. This was the main reason I picked this book up. It was something new from a new prospective that I personally hadn’t seen before.
I love the inclusion of diverse characters. The Rest of Us Just live here includes LGBTQ characters, characters with mental health issues, and characters of color. I love the simply relatability of most of the characters just being regular high schoolers with normal high school problems. (Does she like me, does he like me, do they really like me, will I pass my finals, will I make it in college, etc.)
I liked the fact that the main character Mikey is greatly flawed and requires a lot of help from his environment for growth. I’m not sure if I was supposed to or not but I felt myself sharing much of Mikey’s confusion and anxiety throughout the book. He just wants to get through prom and graduation and things start going wrong and people start dying. And he still just wants to spend time with his friends and make it through to graduation.
Problems for Mikey aren’t just external he finds himself fighting himself and the new emotions he finds surfacing with the impending end of high school. I found myself rooting for him as he tries so hard to fight against the fear and anxiety filling him. I found myself disliking the way other characters treated him and acted around him.
HOWEVER, as a huge fan of books that focus on the “chosen one” and saving the world, it was kind of hard to see the “action” glazed over and almost ignored. Which I know is the point so no one needs to say , “you should have realized what you were in for”. But I still wanted more action. I not saying Mikey needed to run into a burning building or fight a squad of zombie wombats off, just a little more…something. I wanted so much to love this book.
I’m giving this book a 3 out of 5 stars while a good idea, it’s not really my normal read. I found myself confused by the storyline until a few chapters in. Ness gives a short intro at the beginning of each chapter of what is going on with the kids involved in the “strange” happenings before returning to Mikey and his friends and I found myself at odds with the realistic fiction mixed with a little swirling of fantasy. Everything should have added up to a book that I just LOVED, but it didn’t.
3/5
Product Details
ISBN: 9780062403162
ISBN 10: 0062403168
Imprint: HarperTeen
On Sale: 10/06/2015
Trimsize: 5.5 in (w) x 8.25 in (h) x 1.09 in (d)
Pages: 336
List Price: 17.99 USD
BISAC1: JUVENILE FICTION / Boys & Men
BISAC2: JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship
BISAC3: JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Siblings
Book Review: The Rest of Us Just Live Here was originally published on FroggyChemist Blog