Synopsis from 

I am nearly tempted to set everyone a challenge and dare you to name just one book, just the one that somehow comes close to being anything like “The Rest Of Us Just Live Here”. Something tells me that it will not be an easy task.

You see, we always make our heroes so otherworldly powerful or at least a little bit extraordinary that it is refreshing when the hero of the story is just an ordinary kid who is not “The Chosen One” whose only wish is to get on with his life and ask out the most beautiful girl from school before the next averted apocalypse at least.

Mikey may not be the chosen one, but he certainly has his own demons to fight and Patrick Ness’s depiction of our main protagonist together with his other “non Chosen One” friends…hmmm…except maybe one, is worthy of any praises afforded to a deserving champion.

This piece is beautifully written and will tug at your heart strings in places, but will also give you that taste of action and adventure with an end of the world story as a back drop, never taking the spotlight away from our non-heroes. (By the way, I am secretly hoping that the author wrote a full piece on “The Indie Kids”….shh :)).

One thing that struck me however on top of indulging in two very good storylines, is how well teenage angst was explored as well as mental health issues being brought forward. I would not be able to articulate as skilfully in a million years, what it is like to deal with anxiety, how deep of a dark place it takes you, and how hard you have to fight to come out of that hole, and that moment when you are on that edge and about to come out, you are nearly being swallowed whole again. That constant fight to go forward because you have hope!!

From time to time, I do find myself wondering how Mikey is doing now that high school is over.

I hope we’ll find out one day.

LaChouett

Thanking team @WalkerBooksUK for providing me with a review copy of this title.

I have also linked one of my good blogger friends review’s here. Andrew from The Pewter Wolf has a way to say everything else that I don’t say in a review, so I thought I’d share!!