Review: The Rest of us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

 

Rating: 1/5 stars

CW for the book/review: mention of eating disorders, alcoholism, OCD/anxiety, emotional abuse

Here’s a milestone on this blog: my first bona fide rant.

The only reason this isn't one star is because, despite the overall mediocrity of the book, I still loved the premise - a bunch of normal kids just trying to get their goddamn high school diploma while in the background the Chosen Ones fall in love with vampires and summon mythological beings and blow up the school (multiple times). (NB: because of the thing mentioned in the rant at the bottom, I've revised my rating to 1 star, lmao.)

At the beginning, I thought that I just didn't like this because it was set in a high school; let's be real here, a high school is the most boring place on Earth and the only reason to use it as a setting is so that high schoolers can relate to it. Which is obviously completely fine, but if you're like me and haven't been in high school for a few years, it's pretty boring.

But it wasn't just because it was in high school that it was boring. The whole thing was just... fucking boring?

Also, the whole vibe of this was that these were the "ordinary kids" except they... weren't, really? Mikey and Mel's mother is a state senator running for Congress or the Actual Senate (idk I'm not sure, I'm not American so I'm not entirely sure how this shit works), and Henna's parents are going on this charity/missionary thing to Africa during the summer and taking her with them. Obviously it would be boring if they were completely ordinary, but I feel like a lot of the point of this book was portraying the characters as an "everyman" sort of character who everyone could relate to, and they... weren't, really.

But one thing that WAS relatable was a great portrayal of mental illness, specifically bulimia and OCD, and a turbulent home life, including an alcoholic father and an emotionally absent mother (I don't want to call her emotionally abusive because I'm not entirely sure that's the right term for it, but she's definitely Not Great).

I liked the metaphor of the adults not believing all the supernatural shit going on even though they saw the same shit when they were teens, as a parallel to adults dismissing/trivialising teenager's problems because they've forgotten how turbulent adolescence can be and that it is in fact very easy to have The Worst Day of Your Life when you're young and haven't really had many days in the first place.

But I would hesitate recommending this to anyone, including teenagers. As I said, I thought at the beginning it was boring just because of high school and that I'd have loved it when I was sixteen, but after reading the rest, I don't think I would.

There was also a mention that Mikey, the MC, slept with a 27 year old woman when he was 16, and it's all kind of brushed under the rug? Literally the only thing that's said about it is that his mother was "a bit upset" and Mikey describes himself as being "a bit stupid sometimes" - like, ex-fucking-scuse me? What the hell kind of message is that sending to teenagers? It's pretty irresponsible to put this in a book marketed towards teens and to not say something like "this woman was a predator and the teenage boy wasn't at fault" or something. (I know the age of consent in some countries, including my own, is 16 but I honestly think it should be 18, with a "Romeo and Juliet" law where two minors within 2 years of each other wouldn't get prosecuted, because adults having sex with minors turns my fucking stomach. But I could rant about this all day and I'm veering off course a little, so.)

TL;DR incredibly disappointing, wasted potential, wouldn't recommend to anybody, massive failure, the end.