Buy It Here: The Rest of Us Just Live Here
Taken from Amazon’s listing: “Award-winning writer Patrick Ness’s bold and irreverent novel powerfully asks what if you weren’t the Chosen One? The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you were 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 might just be the God of mountain lions… An exceptional novel from the author praised by John Green as “an insanely beautiful writer”.”
For some reason, some of the marketing for this book makes it seem like a comedy. It’s not. Not that there isn’t a beautifully dark string of humour running through it, but a comedy it is not. I was blinking back tears by the end, having fallen completely in love with one of the characters.
This is a fascinating dark look about a few normal teenagers caught up in the latest apocalypse. Refreshingly, they don’t go rushing into danger they know nothing about and manage to save the world. This is a quiet book on the real life consequences of magic, lies, and not listening to your kids.
Despite living through so many apocalypses, near apocalypses and other weird events, the adults in the story refuse to believe what is going on, or anything their kids say.
It is a step away from the world today, and yet so close it makes you gnash your teeth in pain and frustration.
Even though I think adults would enjoy it, I think older (15/16+?)* teens would find it a useful and enjoyable read, since it deals with so many issues relevant to teens today.
Trigger Warnings
Mental Illness – main character has anxiety, main character’s sister has eating disorder
Abuse – main character’s family not exactly fantastic examples of human beings, are blamed for said mental disorders, probably correctly
Alcoholism – main characters father is an alcoholic
Animal death
I believe the sex scene was explicit-ish, like it was definitely a sex scene but it wasn’t Game of Thrones sort of thing
Tropes/Features
Gay Character
Mere Mortals Cannot Solve Disaster
Disaster Not Actual Point of Story
Magic Powers
Tragic Hero/Sidekick
Unreliable Narrator
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