More Than This by Patrick Ness

Hardcover, 472 pages

“A book…it’s a world all on its own…a world made of words…where you live for a while” (p. 135). And boy do I love to live in worlds built by Patrick Ness.

In the beginning, a boy died. And then he woke up again in a different place. It struck me in the same place that made me love movies like The Matrix — it’s another futuristic dystopian novel, but it doesn’t feel like the other dystopian novels.  It’s not one person out to save an entire society, it’s one person trying to save himself. And not in the other-people-are-trying-to-kill-me respect, either. Really, it’s about a boy who wants there to be more than there is, finds out there isn’t more than there is, and then finds out that there is more than he thought, he just had to look somewhere else. The secondary characters are also complex, there’s a love story, but it’s not an in-your-face kind of love story, and they make fun of and play into story tropes. Patrick Ness has done it again.

I think in the video I made where I talked about this book, I said I was in love with Patrick Ness the author. And I definitely still am. This one didn’t speak to me at the same level that A Monster Calls did, and I’m not sure why, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love it all the same. If you haven’t read anything by Patrick Ness yet, I definitely recommend A Monster Calls as a first read. And the audiobook is spectacular.