Shelf Challenge: The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I'm taking part in the 2016 Shelf Challenge.

This year I've decided to try the shelf containing the Carnegie shortlist shelf. My next book is The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness.

 

 



The Rest of Us Just Live Here takes a familiar literary trope and turns it on its head. In many fantasy or sci fi books, there is typically a "Chosen One" - someone that must come to terms with the fact that they have special powers or abilities and help save humanity.

 

In this book, Ness seems to be asking, "What about everyone else? What happens to the people who don't have special powers and are forced to sit on the side lines while an epic battle for humanity rages on?"

 

This is where we meet Mike, an anxiety-riddled teen with severe OCD. His father is an alcoholic, but not an angry one, so that's something. His mother is a career driven politician that appears, on the surface at least, to worry about the family's image more than the family itself.

 

Mike finds solace in his sisters Mel and Meredith & his friends Jared (who happens to be the son of a God that can heal cats) & Henna, whom Mike is in love with but can't quite drum up the courage to say so.

 

Other than that, Mike is a typical teen caught up in a very strange situation. The Chosen Ones, also known as the Indie Kids, are engaged in an epic battle to destroy the planet that involved zombie deer, policeman with glowing blue eyes and mysterious blue lightning bolts that kill anything it their path.

 

It's a strange backdrop, but it seems to work because it doesn't play front and centre. The focus of the novel is Mike and his relationships with Jared, Henna and his mum and dad. Then there's Nathan, a boy that mysteriously shows up on the scene. He has close ties to the Indie Kids, but Mike can't figure out how. Mike doesn't trust him, even if Jared and Henna do.

 

Together the friends hope to make it to graduation before the war raging around them destroys their school or even their entire town.

 

I found myself enjoying this novel even if I had a hard time liking the characters at first. It's definitely a new twist on an overly-familiar young adult theme.