Wednesday 21 October 2015

Book Review - The Rest Of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

The Rest Of Us Just Live Here

Author: Patrick Ness

Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, Fantasy, Science Fiction.  

Published: August 27 2015

Pages: 343 pages (Paperback Edition) (Walker Books)

Read: September 2015

Rating: 4 Stars



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 worshiped by mountain lions.

Book 37/60 - 2015 Goodreads Reading Challenge

The Rest Of Us Just Live Here is Patrick Ness's new standalone release that released, here, on September 1st. It revolved all around the not chosen people. This book is about the people in the background and how the actions of chosen people affect those who are usually not mentioned or even seen in a story. 

This was such a unique topic that I jumped to get this book. I even went and got it on it's release day! Nearly first time ever for me and besides the topic it's Patrick Ness who's the author so of course it was a must. 

But, I did feel quite disappointed, I expected to be blown out of mind with this book, but I didn't find this the case. I really enjoyed this book all the same, it just didn't hold that spark of awesomeness or that blow me out of my mind quality that I had gotten with his previous book 'More Than This'. But if truth be told, it would have been impossible to follow such an astounding book as 'More Than This' was.

Back to The Rest Of Us Just Live Here though I loved the way that Patrick Ness had a little paragraph at the beginning of each chapter depicting what the chosen ones were doing and then we got to see through the eyes of Mikey and what was happening for him at that time that the chosen ones were off doing some crazy business and this I though brought an overall feel to the book, I know that some people didn't like this aspect, but I did and in my opinion, it was quite an original feat along with the concept of the book. 

Now to talk about the characters. Mikey was a likeable character. I saw his opinions clearly and felt for him as we went through the novel. I felt his desperation to want to fit in by being a chosen one, his desperation to beat what affected him and most of all his desperation to live a normal life without the chaos. And he became such a real character because of the mundane traits he held and the desires he wanted. I also loved both his sisters and found that I thoroughly enjoyed watching this sibling relationship. The side characters of Mikey's friends were another great addition to this book. By the end there was just such an awesome friendship relationship that literally I was left tearing up. And of course let's not forget the Indie kids!! Even though they weren't seen much through Mikey's perspective, I really liked these guys too. 

In the end, while this book did disappoint me a bit, I thoroughly enjoyed it so much in its own way and I'll be sure to pick up the next book that Patrick Ness writes and I'll be continuing down his road of publications. If you haven't picked this up yet, I really feel you should!

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