The Rest of Us Just Live Here

by Patrick Ness
Hennepin County Library hardcover 317 pages
genre: YA realistic / fantasy

This was weird. Just really weird. Some normal kids dealing with teen stuff - OCD, eating disorder, friendships, romance, family, graduation, etc. And then there were the indie kids getting killed, the blue lights shining out of possessed people's and animals' eyes, a dead deer becoming a zombie deer, etc.

I actually got into the story after a while and enjoyed aspects of it, but it's definitely for older teens and a unique kind of reader.

The Knife of Never Letting Go

by Patrick Ness
Hennepin County Library audioCDs 10 disks
read by Nick Podehl
genre: teen dystopian fiction

Oh. My. Word. This was so intense and different from other books I've read! I went onto Wikipedia to find out how the rest of the series goes. The suspense is too much! It was both horrifying and fascinating. When I first started listening to it (Podehl does an excellent job narrating), I wasn't sure of the setting - Earth or somewhere else? When? What the heck?

Settlers on New World have developed their own communities. Todd Hewitt has grown up as the youngest boy in Prentisstown, believing what he's been told. As he approaches his birthday (thirteen years of thirteen months each), he looks forward to becoming a man. On a random day in the swamp, though, he and his dog Manchee hear something unusual, and his life unravels into a crazy run from the evil men who want to take him.