Title: The Rest of Us Just Live HereEvery story focuses on The Chosen One. But what about the people on the sidelines? The normal people who have to put up with the indie kids and all their crazy paranormal activity? They have lives too.
Author: Patrick Ness
Genre: Fantasy, Contemporary
Warnings: death, mentions of suicide
Rating: 2 stars
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This is by far one of the coolest premises I've come across. I was so sure that Patrick Ness of all people could do it justice.
Sadly the concept was better than the execution. I don't think the story ever came down to a point. Maybe it would have if it was a 100% contemporary novel and there was enough time to develop a theme, but it was the subverted fantasy aspect was the interesting part that interested me in the first place.
There was a lot of emotional depth with a strong and truthful representation of anxiety and family issues which made up the bulk of the story. But the underlying issue was that I just couldn't connect to Mikey's voice. I felt for his experiences, but was unengaged by him as a character. All the meaningful messages this book could have projected were watered down by the unengaging language.
It was a quick read simply because there was hardly a story and there were limited character arcs. There was no strong sense of theme, which is sad becuase The Rest of Us could have been great. I respect the author for doing something different, but there wasn't enough of a point to make it a memorable story.
Diversity Note: gay character, mixed race character + characters with anxiety, OCD and anorexia.
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