The Rest of Us Just
Live Here is Mikey's story, a normal kid with normal friends in a normal
small town that has extraordinary events. These events involve
"indie" kids saving the world from vampires, zombies, ghosts, and
just general monsters of the week. Mikey and his friends, though ordinary, are
on the cusp of graduation, ready to escape their tiny town, both because of bad
home situations and terror of what will strike the town next.
This book is a hybrid between modern fantasy and an
exploration of a myriad of health issues afflicting a modern day family. This
hybrid is interesting in theory, but the execution isn't exactly successful or
seamless. It's my opinion that this could've been a much better book if it
stuck to either one of these directions, rather than trying to combine the two.
Maybe I'm alone here, but I spent a good portion of the book
wondering if the "indie kids" and that part of this universe existed
only in our narrator's head. I don't have any justification for thinking this
other than the fact that our narrator isn't entirely reliable, but everything
that pertains to the indie kids is so vague and unexplored that I had a hard
time accepting it as reality.
I spent the entirety of the book wondering what exactly the
indie kids are. You can infer that
they act as some sort of conduit between the natural and supernatural, whatever
the supernatural means in this context. But how are the indie kids chosen? Who
chooses them? What are their tasks exactly? What are their powers? Why do they
all have such unique names? Are they born with those names, or do they select
them later in life after being chosen? I don't necessarily need these questions
to be answered, but the fact that I had so many unanswered questions while
reading the book was distracting.
Each chapter begins with a short synopsis that tells us what
is going on with the indie kids. These passages are interesting but vague. As
the story progresses, you can see the overlap between the actions of the indie
kids and the effects on our normal main characters.
The book progresses quickly. It's easy to get swept up in
the drama while reading it, but, as soon as I put it down for a bit, I wondered
what in the world just happened. Not that the book is actually difficult to
comprehend, but I hated wondering what the point of it all was the entire time
I was reading it.
Again, the book would've been infinitely better if it has
been a fully committed fantasy novel or a fully committed contemporary novel.
Had it been fantasy, there might be more information about the indie kids and
how that world works. We might've gotten an explanation on what exactly the
blue-eyed creatures were. Had it been about simply Mikey and his family, well,
that could have been interesting too. They've got no shortage of issues to work
through. His politician mother's public face versus her private one, his
father's alcoholism, his sister's eating disorder, and his own OCD.
Not that I loved the normal characters or anything. Plus,
one of them isn't even normal at all, seeing how he's one-quarter god and is
worshipped by all felines, house cats and mountain lions alike.
And the romance is just... annoying, for lack of a better
word. All of it. Mikey pining for Henna, Henna having the "stomach
feeling" for Nathan, Nathan's elusive behavior, Mel's affair with a doctor
seven years her senior, Jared's secrets... It was a tad exhausting to keep up
with.
Unfortunately, this is a forgettable book with forgettable
characters. It's stunning to me that Patrick Ness wrote it. The very fact that
his name is on the cover is the reason that I read it at all. But luckily, this
is the exception and not the standard. The Chaos Walking is one of my favorite
YA series, and the other works I've read by him have all been incredible. This
one may have been disappointing, but I’ll continue to read his books with great
enthusiasm.
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