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The Rest of Us Just Live Here

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The Rest of Us Just Live Here

By: Patrick Ness
Narrated by: James Fouhey
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About this listen

Award-winning writer Patrick Ness’s bold and irreverent novel powerfully asks what if you weren't the Chosen One? The one who's supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you were like Mikey?

Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again. Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life. Even if your best friend might just be the God of mountain lions....

©2015 Patrick Ness (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Coming of Age Dating & Sex Depression & Mental Health Difficult Situations Dystopian Emotions & Feelings Family & Relationships Family Life Fantasy Fiction Friendship Genre Fiction LGBTQ+ Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Science Fiction Science Fiction & Fantasy Magic Witty Dating Paranormal

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Critic reviews

"This is Ness at his best." ( The Bookseller)
All stars
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really enjoyable but I am a big fan of his work. Fun, thought provoking and heartbreaking at times.

great read for teens and adults

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Interesting premise, a good YA book. It is entertaining enough but didn't grab me as much as Chaos walking books.

It's a coming of age book which might be better suited for younger audience.
Less so for adult audience.

Good YA book

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I was very taken in by the start of this book but I found the end underwhelming

Good start disappointing end

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A platonic love story between two best friends - with a background alien apocalypse/chosen one narrative...? yeah I really liked it, thought it was hella weird, but sweet and sad.

Cool, funny and not at all what I expected

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This book is what Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be from Jonathan and Harmony's POV. It cleverly portrays how it feels like to live in a small town where everything seems to happen - to someone else. You still have to live your regular lives and deal with the struggles of being a teenager. And the apocalypse. I particularly loved the portrayal of the protagonist and his struggles with his condition without superpowers, without a special background that gives him something extra- just an ordinary person dealing with his s**t, while all around him things fall to pieces.
Almost in the background, we get the epic tale of the struggles that others - the 'heroes' go through to save the world, summarised in pathos and a few quick sentences. Showing us that this epic tale is not all that important. Powerful message that you can almost miss and great representation without parading it around.

funny!

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I really like Patrick Ness's books and have read or listened to them all.

The concept of The Rest Of Us Just Live Here is unique - in all the supernatural teen books with vampires, wizards and craziness going on, what happens to the rest of the kids who go to those schools and live in those towns?

It's a great one-line pitch and the writer just about pulls the story off, although that central idea soon becomes a burden rather than a blessing. The interesting parts of the story frequently seem to happen off-page and, in an effort to keep the story grounded, there are long periods where it feels like very little of consequence is going on.

Of course, that's life. There are long parts of people's every day lives in which nothing happens - but, as a novel, it's not quite enough to consistently pull the reader/listener back to the novel.

I finished it - and enjoyed it - but there were many times where I was fine with putting the audio down and going off to do other things. I never rushed back to it.

Away from the story itself, the narration is excellent. The sign of a good reader for me is that, as a listener, you forget there's somebody's voice telling the story. It simply fits. James Fouhey does an excellent job.

Enjoyable and yet the central premise...

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What little story there is yawn inducing. Who’s talking ? Almost everyone sounds the same and attempts at accents are embarrassing

Dull…

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