Genre: YA Contemporary, Fantasy
ASIN: B00QQO83U8
Published: October 6th 2015 by HarperTeen
Series: none
Length: 336 pages
Source: eARC from 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 Hereis 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.
Thank you to HarperCollins and Edelweiss for the review copy in exchange for an honest review.
This book was honestly something. It was different, but in all the good ways. It was realistic fiction, but it was also fantasy and science fiction. I want to start off by saying it took me way too long to finish this book, but I did in the end!
Mikey and his group of friends are not the Chosen Ones. Instead of dealing with demons and angels and people who want to kill them, they deal with alcoholism, eating disorders, sexuality, mental illnesses, and others—stuff that people realistically deal with. What makes this book really special is that every chapter starts off with the Chosen Ones fighting or solving their own problems, and the contrast between what they have to deal with physically and outwardly is so different from the inner battles that the main characters have to fight.
What I loved about this book was that it so honestly captured the real lives of teenagers; Mikey was in a car accident; his sister has an eating disorder; Mickey’s friend is gay. Ness perfectly expresses how things will get better, even if they don’t seem like they will. It really shows how their stories are just as important as those demon-fighting heroes you usually read about.
"The thing about scars, though," she says. "Nothing you can do
except wear them with pride."
The only thing I would add to this book is that throughout reading this novel, I wanted to read about Satchel and Finn and the Chosen Ones; honestly, it seems so interesting, and I would be down with reading a spin-off of THE REST OF US JUST LIVE HERE, but in the Chosen Ones’ perspectives.
There's different kinds of scars, brother.
Overall, I really did enjoy the premise of this story and the themes Ness covers throughout the novel. I totally believe that I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t spent like, a month reading it; it was mostly me not feeling as connected to the characters as much as I should have been if I had read it quicker.
Although this might not have been my cup of tea, I’m very excited to read more of Patrick Ness’s novels!
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