Instant New York Times Bestseller One of Fall 2019’s Best Books (People, EW, Lithub, Vox, Washington Post, and more) A young boy is haunted by a voice in his head in this acclaimed epic of literary horror from the author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Christopher is seven years old. Christopher is the new kid in town. Christopher has an imaginary friend. We can swallow our fear or let …
Christopher is seven years old.
Christopher is the new kid in town.
Christopher has an imaginary friend.
We can swallow our fear or let our fear swallow us.
Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It’s as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out.
At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six long days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. He returns with a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same again.
Twenty years ago, Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower made readers everywhere feel infinite. Now, Chbosky has returned with an epic work of literary horror, years in the making, whose grand scale and rich emotion redefine the genre. Read it with the lights on.
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So this was a strange one for me and If I’m honest it was a tad confusing and times.
I mean I got the general gist but the style of narration was a bit long-winded.
My copy also had an issue with the formating so some of the words would run together which was somewhat irritating as well as this was throughout the whole story.
I rarely comment on the formating itself and I haven’t actually taken that into account with my rating as I assume that won’t be the case with the finished book itself.
My rating only reflects my enjoyment and connection with the story unfolding.
so this started out well with a new state and town for a single mother and her seven-year-old son Christopher.
Escaping from an abusive relationship mum and son again attempt to start over in a new place renting a room at a local motel, mum finding a new job and son starting a new class.
Imaginary Friend is then told mostly from Cristophers POV.
There is some input from others along the way but this is mainly his roadshow.
Lured into Mission Street Woods by an unknown entity the young boy is missing for six days.
On his return, Cristopher has no memory of the past week just a vague sense of something being off.
But one thing’s for sure he is changed and events are set to play out in a battle of epic proportions and Cristopher along with his friends and family are right at the centre of it all.
This had such a creepy ominous undertone mainly because of the young age of the boys involved.
I do think this maybe would have played out better with the boys being slightly older than they were; not by much just maybe nine or ten rather than seven.
It was just all that creeping around at night just seemed unlikely at age seven.
So every unrelated incident here formed a part of a larger whole as events played out until it all begins to make a kind of uneasy sense no matter how bizarre things originally seemed on the outside looking in.
This was all about good versus evil, love and forgiveness and self-sacrifice.
Add into that man’s self-serving attitude which is just human nature and we get to my main bug-bear here which was all the overt religious stuff, it was just everywhere.
This book then started to feel very preachy indeed and Imaginary Friend is long so it started to get somewhat tedious.
I am honestly surprised I kept going and this was not a DNF this just went on and on with no end in sight.
I do feel this needs condensing down somewhat as there was just so much unnecessary filling that was serving no purpose at all.
Did I enjoy this? hard one, there were times when this did shine somewhat but then so many others when things just fell flat and this just felt too wordy.
I was looking forward to this one: but I’m sorry to say the actuality for me just didn’t live up to the original hype which really is a shame.
I voluntary reviewed a copy of Imaginary Friend.
Reviewed By Beckie Bookworm
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