Review: The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
Despite reservations about the ending, I would recommend The Rest of Us Just Live Here; it’s a welcome addition to YA novels involving OCD and anxiety.
Despite reservations about the ending, I would recommend The Rest of Us Just Live Here; it’s a welcome addition to YA novels involving OCD and anxiety.
Although it lacks detail in its portrayal of spina bifida, this is a well-written, cute series featuring a very cool character with the condition.
s.e. smith’s rave review of Wild Awake was one of the very first posts on this blog. We invited s.e. and author Hilary T. Smith to discuss books, mental illness, and everything in between.
Although several elements of Red’s autism are portrayed well and I’m eager to read the sequels, the character is often relegated to muttering statistics and nervously stimming in the background.
This is a book about a girl with an autistic brother. The autistic brother is crucial to the plot, but her actual brother is really more of a plot device than anything else.
Stranger represents a case where verisimilitude—the appearance of plausibility—succeeds where a more realistic representation of disability might have failed.
While Rory’s portrayal isn’t flawless, it’s well researched, and a significant step in the right direction of treating autistic characters as regular teenagers and integral parts of the cast.
This book definitely had its creepy moments, but I think other books have taken the protective older brother trope and did it better—without turning the younger brother into a plot device.
All too often, portrayals of disability in literature mirror the common assumption that disability signifies helplessness.
After our rave review of Cindy Rodriguez’s debut When Reason Breaks—about two very different girls who are both dealing with depression—we were excited to invite both reviewer and author to the website this week to discuss the book further.