The Rest of Us Just Live Here – Patrick Ness

The last Patrick Ness book that I read was More than This – it was amazing so I had high expectations! This one is a twist on the usual; it’s about the normal kids who are not fighting the aliens or saving the world, the kids who just want to get on with things, finish school and go to college. Mikey, Mel, Henna, Jared, Meredith and Nathan are having their own problems. Mikey is super clever and is the same year at school as his sister Mel, who has had some health issues (she was bulimic) and has spent some time in hospital. Jared is the gay best friend and Henna is the love interest. The book mainly focuses on Mikey.
If you read the chapter description you will see that is the sub story in the book. It describes the ‘Indie Kids’ and their battle to save the world. I didn’t take too much notice of these at first so I was a little lost at the beginning and wasn’t sure what was happening! Basically, the Indie Kids are like the super heroes and they are frantically working to save the world from an alien attack which our kids are mostly unaware of. They know that about once a generation some evil force comes to take over the world and the Indie Kids battle to save it, culminating in the complete destruction of the school, which Mikey is desperate not to happen so that they can all graduate without any problems. I guess they are just struggling to be normal like most teenagers!
Jared and Mikey are best friends and spend a lot of time hanging out in various cars. Jared is the son of a God and cats are seriously attracted to him, he has the power to control them and they worship him (!)
I like the characters in this book. I like the fact that they are the normal ones and the super kids are the ones that are not getting all the attention. In the blurb it says ‘not everyone has to be the hero’ and that is kind of the point of the book. Not everyone is amazing but we are all trying to get on with it in the best way we know how. I can relate to Mikey and his wish to get out of the suburbs and off to college with no problems.
His mum is a State Senator and isn’t really too interested in the lives of her children (even though one has OCD, one is bulimic and one is a child prodigy) and their father is an alcoholic who doesn’t really appear much. It’s clever, well written and amusing but it didn’t grab me like More Than This. It was also quite short so almost as soon as you got into it it finishes.
look out for the scene with the deer and the car crash and then what he finds out afterwards…