And more than anything, Ness ensures that they get to tell their story from their perspective, how they want to tell it. The book's "real" story centers on Mikey, his sister Mel, his best friend Jared, his crush Henna, and his kid sister Meredith. For example, here's the opening paragraph to The Rest of Us Just Live Here: CHAPTER THE FIRST, in which the Messenger of the Immortals arrives in a surprising shape, looking for a permanent Vessell and after being chased by her through the woods, indie kid Finn meets his final fate.īut Finn doesn't actually appear in the chapter until the end, and when he does, he's just someone running by the ordinary high schoolers, who remark, essentially, what are these indie kids up to now ? Instead, readers get hilarious transitions from what the indie kids are doing to what our main characters are doing, which is usually homework and stressing about prom.
Each chapter begins with a brief blurb about what's happening in the indies' world. The novel is cleverly constructed where the Chosen Ones, dubbed "the indies" by the characters in Ness' book, get their story told - but it is falls to the background of the ordinary high schoolers' stories. The Rest of Us Just Live Here is a clever, hilarious book, to be sure, but it also has the heart and engaging characters to rise it above just a satire or parody of Chosen One YA narratives.
Turns out, we "normal" people may not get the spotlight, but we're just as extraordinary as the apocalypse-halting superstars. But what about, well, everyone else? Patrick Ness' The Rest of Us Just Live Here is an ode to all of the ordinary teenagers living in a Chosen Ones world. Everyone knows YA's stars: Katniss Everdeen, Tris Prior, Harry Potter, Bella Swan, and others who seem to continually save the world.
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