Review: The Rest Of Us Just Live Here - Patrick Ness

Genre: YA Science Fiction

Published: 27th August 2015

Length: 352 pages

My rating: 5/10

Overview: This time around, it isn't the main characters who have to save the world. They are just getting on with everything as graduation looms closer, whilst the Indie kids are the ones in the background saving the world.

My younger sister started reading the Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness recently and as she's so obsessed with it I decided to try one of his books that is aimed slightly more at older readers. The concept instantly grabbed me; it seemed unusual and innovative, to have all the action going down in the background, and the main characters not being at the centre of it. I kind of thought the action would affect the MCs a little more than it actually did, picturing the action more as a daily occurrence they just got on with and were completely aware of what was happening, but this didn't really happen. We get to know what is happening with the indie kids purely by a little summary at the start of each chapter (I've got to admit, I did quite like this formatting) and then little pieces of what is going on there affects the MCs, but for me Patrick Ness didn't really make the most of a situation that could have been really humorous or meaningful, but instead always leaves his characters vaguely confused and concerned about what happened. The story of what is actually happening to the MCs themselves is not overly interesting or original to be honest. Also, if your name is Finn do not read this book as Patrick Ness seems to have some kind of vendetta against people with that name and I'm pretty sure he killed off at least three Finns in this book.

I'm always happy to see mental health representation in books, and in this story we have a character with an eating disorder and a character with OCD. I've also suffered with anorexia but I couldn't really relate to the character with the eating disorder - although that's not necessarily a bad point as characters who feel too similar to me can really mess me up (@ To The Bone - please do not watch this film if you've had an eating disorder, it came out a week after I stopped going to therapy and I wasn't ready to handle it but anyways). We also have the gay best friend, which if you've read my discussion last week, you'll probably be able to guess my views about him but whatever, he wasn't hideously stereotypical so I don't hate him. There's also a black girl in this friendship group so now the group can be labelled as 'diverse' even though this is nowadays pretty much the bare minimum for every author so they don't get bashed so it's not that much of an achievement but whatever.

All in all, this wasn't a bad novel, but there's nothing extremely loveable or memorable about it either. I'm finding it hard to sum up because on a scale of 'OMG I LOVED IT IM LITERALLY DYING OF FEELS ASFGKL' to 'this is so bad I want to die' it was just kind of a 'meh'. If you're looking for an easy read and hate indie kids, then you might as well read it.

#patrickness #review