Hey everyone, how are you all doing today? I'm doing pretty well for a Tuesday morning. I was able to finish reading The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness yesterday afternoon so I'm here to talk about that book right now. Let's get right into it.
I'm not hugely into modern YA novels, but when my sister told me the premise of this book, I knew I had to read it. She happened to have a copy and she lent it to me in 2016, as the book came out in 2015 and I'm pretty sure we hadn't moved yet when she lent it to me. I couldn't put it down so I got through it in a day or two and loved it so much that I ended up going back and re-reading it, which took me another day or two to finish the second time. I liked it so much that my sister let me keep her copy. Which has now been on my shelf ever since.
As I mentioned in yesterday's blog update post, The Rest of Us Just Live Here is about a group of high school seniors who are only a couple of weeks away from graduating. Normally in YA novels, and just fiction in general, the story is about the Chosen One, someone who can bring balance to the Force, save the world from Vampires, Demons, and any other extra-dimensional being who tries to conquer the world and kills a bunch of people to achieve their goals. But, this book isn't about them. This book is about the kids who don't get chosen to save the world. They're just trying to live in it and find it difficult to do so when their high school is always about to explode because of something the Chosen Ones, called the Indie Kids here, do while saving the world. And while Mikey, Jared, Mel, Henna, Nathan, and Mikey and Mel's younger sister, Meredith, aren't Indie Kids, they are each touched by what's going on in different ways. Henna's brother was an Indie Kid, Nathan was involved with the Indie Kids as a mascot (he's the Snapper Carr of the Indie Kids basically), and Jared is part god because his grandmother married a human back in the day. It's weird.
I can relate to Mikey so much. His anxiety over all the changes that are happening in his life, his OCD, and his fear that his friends don't need him as much as he needs them, wondering if they are his friends even. I can relate to those things because I'm autistic. And, aside from the OCD, I felt all of those things when I was a senior in high school. Moreso the second time around in 2006, than the first time around in 2005 (believe me, I had other problems in 2005). All through high school, and even to this day, there are times where I do wonder if my friends don't need me as much as I need them or if I'm the least wanted person in the group. Of course I know that that isn't true, but I did, and still do, have times where I wondered.
Even though the book is told from Mikey's point of view, and narrated in first person I might add, each of the main characters gets equal amount of screen time. I complained about this alot in when I reviewed Animorphs books #1-6, and Ness seems to have a good handle on having the story be first person POV but also giving all four of the main kids a chance to shine.
Before I continue, I wanna talk about the author a little bit here. So Patrick Ness is mostly known for writing YA novels. However, Doctor Who fans might recognize the name because Ness created the spin-off, Class and served as the show's head writer during it's eight episode run in 2016. I've never seen the show though I remember seeing commercials for it on Space Channel at the time. I've heard it was decent, so maybe I'll check it out sometime. In any case this book is more like the American version, but minus the Doctor, and about the kids who aren't directly involved in the protecting the world from the bad guys thing.
One of the things I love about this book is that each chapter starts with a synopsis of what the chapter would be if the book was focused on the battle between the Indie Kids and the Immortals (the threat of the book) rather than on Mikey, his friends and their lives. Just from those synopses I kinda wanna read that book as well just because it sounds so interesting. Not that this book isn't interesting, because it is, but still, now I want that other book as well.
The biggest reason that I love this book is because it focuses on the mundane. I mean for the majority of the book Mikey and the others are trying to get through final exams, prom and graduation. That's it. And yet the universe doesn't want to let them just do that so the weird stuff happens to them even though they have no idea what's actually going on. I guess that's kind of how it is with most teenagers even without the supernatural stuff. At least that's how it seemed to me when I was in high school. Sure we learned about things in school, and 9/11 happened when I was in grade nine, but aside from that major event, my classmates, my friends, and I were just trying to get through the day and didn't really care about what was happening in the world outside our school. To us that was stuff that the adults were dealing with and didn't have a whole lot to do with us. In this book all of that is magnified due to the supernatural elements.
While the characters don't deal with the supernatural stuff directly, they still have plenty of YA tropes to handle. For example, Mikey is in love with his friend, Henna, but has been too nervous to tell her up to this point and everyone around him knows it. Including Henna it turns out. Naturally this leads to some tension because she thinks she's developing feelings for the new kid, Nathan and Mikey gets super jealous. By the way I have a problem with Nathan as a character, but I'll get to that shortly. Another example is that pretty much all of the teen characters have problems with their parents for one reason or another. This is a thing that happens quite often on TV in shows like Degrassi and The O.C. and it's been a thing since the 80s at least.
My one problem with this book, as much as I love it, is the way Nathan is portrayed. Aside from causing tension between Mikey and Henna, and then later Mikey and Jared, he's basically a non character. Ness portrays the character as mysterious and up to no good, but it feels forced because the story is from Mikey's perception, which naturally makes Nathan suspect, because Mikey doesn't like him. At the same time he's basically just there to cause trouble, much like how Oliver Trask was only there to cause problems for Ryan and Marissa in the first season of The O.C. with no real character development or anything like that. It's fine I guess, but I would've liked a bit more of a reason for why he shows up in town and starts going to their school when there's only two weeks (when the book starts) until graduation. Who does that? Most people, unless absolutely necessary don't move until summertime or the middle of the school year, because going to a new school with only two weeks left, especially in the senior year of high school, is absolutely pointless.
I also don't like Mikey, Mel and Meredith's parents, but what do you expect? You're not supposed to like them. They're not Sandy and Kirsten Cohen from The O.C. or Snake and Spike from Degrassi: The Next Generation. They're there because Mikey and Mel don't graduate from high school until the end of the book (spoiler), and Meredith, who I love by the way, is only ten years old. So of course their parents would be around.
Overall I really enjoyed this book. If you're a fan of slice of life stories and the supernatural or Fantasy or Science Fiction, whatever you wanna call it, then I think you'll enjoy this book. Even if you're not into the YA novels. Also, if you like Class then you'll wanna check this book out too.
That's going to be it for me for today. I will be back tomorrow though with my overview of the Walt Disney Signature Collection. I ended up watching four episodes of Haganai NEXT before bed last night and there's only twelve episodes in the series. So I've decided to continue with my four episodes a night routine for it and finish it up tomorrow night so I can review it on Thursday, which will push Super Mario Bros. 3 back to Monday of next week. My review of Batman Forever will still come out on Friday though for sure. Oh and I've also started reading Q-Squared by Peter David. Yes, it's a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel from the 90s. So stay tuned for that review at some point too. Until then, have a great afternoon and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
No comments:
Post a Comment