2018 Abe Lincoln Nominees: The Rest of Us Just Live Here

What if you aren’t the Chosen One? The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death?
What if you’re 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 is worshipped by mountain lions.

Award-winning writer Patrick Ness’s bold and irreverent novel powerfully reminds us that there are many different types of remarkable. 

goodreads.com

While Ness packs his pages with wit (this is one of those novels that seem as if they were a joy to write), there's plenty of emotional heft in his turning of the genre tables. He reminds us that it's not a choice to be a chosen one, but it is in everyone's power to be a hero, by caring about others, by fighting to become your own truest self. In real life, of course, none of us are "chosen." As Jared tells Mikey, "Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing the things that are great for them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people properly. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyway." That's a far more useful power than being able to defeat soul-eating ghosts, and you don't even have to be a chosen one to wield it.

New York Times Book Review