Imaginary Friend is Stephen Chbosky’s long awaited second novel. If his name sound familiar to you, it’s because he wrote The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Imaginary Friend was definitely a book that was out of my typical reading genre, but I’m glad that I gave it a chance. This horror book gave me Stranger Things vibes all the way and I loved how unique and intriguing the storyline was. I was immediately captured with the story and its characters from page 1. However, there were some instances in the story that lowered my overall rating of the book. First and foremost, the book felt like it was way too long (over 700 pages) and I thought it could have been culled down to under 500 or so. I wasn’t a big fan of religion talk or the descriptions of the dark fantasy in the book. There were also too many characters to keep track of and I lost interest in a few of the characters towards 60% of the book. Overall, if you like thriller or horror books, I would recommend picking this one up.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for a fair review. Maybe it's an honest review. Either way.

This book was awesome. I loved this author's other book but this is something entirely different. It is a horror / thriller centering around a 7 year old boy and his imaginary friend. The friend convinces the little boy to build a tree house. Then the little boy must save the entire town. Or not. You'll have to read it. I thought it was exceptional. I had a hard time putting it down. Which is saying a lot since it is also pretty long. If you like a good Christmas horror story, this is definitely the thing for you. Actually, this is just a really great book regardless of your preferences.

I picked up Imaginary Friend looking to get into the spooky mood. As we start to get into fall, I'm ready for some creepy reads. Unfortunately, this one didn't work for me - but if you are interested, you may want to stop reading and just go into it without reading any reviews.

A brief synopsis: Single mother Kate has just moved with her 7 year old son to get a fresh start. One day Christopher disappears into the woods and no one sees him for 6 days. When he comes back - he seems to be unharmed...but is also different than he was before in ways that aren't so easily seen.

The things I loved about it:
- the audiobook production for Imaginary Friend was INCREDIBLE. I alternated between listening and reading but listened to a majority of it because it was so incredibly well done!
- the first half of the book was utterly compelling for me. I got a lot of old school Stephen King vibes and was totally here for it!

The things I didn't love about it:
- after the halfway point, it started to feel long to me. There were parts that felt very repetitive.
- the resolution was not what I was expecting. There were some twists that I thought were interesting, but the ultimate ending of the book didn't work for me. It's impossible to say more without spoilers but it wasn't for me.

Thank you to Netgalley, Librofm and Grand Central Publishing for the advance reading and listening copies to review.

Kate has finally escaped the abusive man she was dating. She snuck out during the night with her son Christopher. They find a small town where she thinks they will be safe. Until Christopher vanishes. He is gone for 6 days and comes back in perfect health, but nobody can see the changes inside his head. Christopher has a mission. One he must complete by Christmas Day. The next few weeks will lead Christopher and Kate to a fight for their lives, and those they have grown to love.

All I could think while reading this book was “is this really the same author as The Perks Of Being A Wallflower?” This book was so different. It’s kind of hard to actually give a full review on this one because it is so different from anything else I have ever read. It’s definitely weird, but also kept me wondering what was happening. I would say overall I really enjoyed the reading experience but I still can’t decide how I feel about the story. It’s a long book at over 700 pages, but it did not feel that way at all while reading. I flew through this one. I would recommend this book just for the aspect of stepping outside the box and reading something so different from what is out there. This book is certainly unique.

This is about as far away from The Perks of Being a Wallflower as you can get! This creepy little novel will keep you reading late into the nigh, if you can. I was totally freaked out reading this one. I am awfully glad that I did it while I was not home alone. It is the classic battle of good versus evil but with a big twist. I will never look at needle and thread the same way. (Or a treehouse)

Thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy of this book.

To my great dismay, I had to put this one down on the Did Not Finish shelf. I loved Perks and while I knew Imaginary Friend was going to be very different, I did think I would like it. The premise is not bad and Christopher is a sweet and endearing character but the book is a struggle to read. It's dragged out far more than is necessary and there are chapters that could be cut entirely without it making a difference to the overall story. Chbosky's writing is still enjoyable, but well done prose doesn't save this one for me.

This book as a little too dark and twisty for my tastes and while I finished it, it was a struggle. I wouldn’t say it was bad but it was just way out there in left field and I guess just not my flavor.

Full review to come closer to release. If you like scary things then be sure to pre-order this. It definitely gave me the creeps! Be aware: This is absolutely not The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

DNF at 30%. Oh, how I wanted to love this novel. I'm a huge fan of Chbosky, books, and films and wanted this to be my favorite horror novel of the year. But sadly, I could not get into this novel and could not make it through 800 pages of it.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I can't believe I didn't DNF this one. It was over 700 pages, and at least half of that could have been edited out to tighten up the plot and get to the action faster. There was a lot of repetition, and seriously, there were multiple climax points of the story. The "big final battle" happened three or four times. Much of the story never made sense, and if it was allegorical, well, it didn't really do well on that front either.

Overall, I was invested in a handful of the characters, so I stuck it out for them, but I didn't much enjoy the book. It was a rambling, poorly plotted, "trying too hard to write a Stephen King-esque epic horror fantasy and not succeeding," confusing mess of a book.

I hate giving poor reviews of novels, but alas, I promised honesty. I can't really say I recommend this one much at all.

Thank you Gallery Books for the opportunity to read and review Imaginary Friend! Stephen Chbosky has been instrumental in my life since The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and this book did not disappoint! Full review will be posted closer to release.

Kate Reese and her 7-year old son, Christopher, are on the run. After fleeing her abusive boyfriend in the middle of the night, the pair end up as far off the beaten path as they could find: Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. At first, everything seems to be going well, then Christopher vanishes for six days and emerges from the woods seemingly unharmed, but he soon finds not completely unchanged.

Christopher has no recollection of the days he spent lost in the woods. He has no idea how he got there, but he knows that a "nice man" helped him get out. After the local sheriff and police force scour the woods and find no trace of anyone, Christopher's claims are brushed aside as a hallucination. But someone did help Christopher, it's the same voice that's now in his head pushing him to complete a mission only he can pull off: Build a tree house in the woods by Christmas or else his mother, and the entire town, will never be the same again.

This was...ambitious. The whole premise was definitely intriguing, but it's a bit hard to stay suspenseful at over 700 pages. I felt like it could've easily been at least 300 pages shorter and the story would've been way more effective. I didn't fully feel the horror aspects that I was expecting, but it was still eerie at times. I also didn't realize how big of a part religion would have in this. Overall, I thought it was just okay.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower deserves all the acclaim it has received. Between that and my love of the horror genre, I was really excited when Imaginary Friend was announced. My excitement went even higher when I found out that Chbosky's first book in 20 years was being touted as a literary horror novel. All of these things should have combined into a fantastic reading experience. Unfortunately, it's didn't. At all. As some would say, I just can't even with this book.

The first 50 pages or so were actually quite good and interesting. So, if you've seen the reviews from notable authors, Joe Hill didn't lie. But you may have also noticed that Hill specifically spoke just about the first 50 pages. Want to know why? Because the story veers hard after that, and not in a good way. If I was reviewing just the first 50 pages, this would be a 5-star book. The rest of it plummets it hard to 1-star territory, though.

We spend the next 650 pages inside a Christian story that's so on the nose that it's actually overly kind to call any of it an allegory. After all, by the end there's absolutely no hidden meanings inside Imaginary Friend. And that's one of the most disappointing things of all because the term literary horror typically denotes a much more deeply layered experience that requires contemplation. There's nothing to contemplate here other than Chbosky's apparently skewed view of women, along with the question of why he felt the need to spend 650 pages basically preaching and moralizing.

If you're not into Christian horror dressed up as horror, this book probably won't be for you. Even if you are into Christian horror, this book still might not be for you because it contains a lot of profanity and sexual content that seems to be turning off many reviewers who should have been the book's primary target audience. For the record, I have no issues with the profanity and sexual content, although it sure would have been nice if women weren't portrayed as corrupt entities unable to control their sexuality. There's actually a scene where a virgin teen's sex drive causes her to "corrupt" her Christian, virgin boyfriend by giving him oral sex. ::rolls eyes::

The constant biblical references quickly became annoying and repetitious, as did the rest of the story. Everything was tied into the bible after the first 50 pages or so, and I mean everything. In one section, Chobsky writes that "the children scattered like the parting of the Red Sea" (or something to that effect). This is a prime example of everything being a biblical reference, and these things happen again and again and again, ad nauseam.

I'm pretty sure Chbosky has never met any 7-year-old kids based on the way he portrays them. And it's quite frankly disgusting that he insisted on writing the bully's nickname of one character, "Special Ed," almost every single time the character came up throughout the entire book. And it's not like that was just when people were taunting him. Nope. It comes up when people think about him, when the character is talking ("blah, blah, blah," Special Ed said), etc.

SPOILER ALERT
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Okay, here's the thing -- this book pretends to be something else for a long time, but it's nothing more than the typical good vs. evil, heaven vs. hell story that's been told and retold for centuries. Chobsky does mess with Christian mythology a lot to create his own version of Hell, so at least there's a bit of originality there. But the idea of the Devil trying to escape Hell (every 50 years, apparently... sigh... can we please cancel the trope of 'X bad thing happens every X years?') by finding a dyslexic child and making him smart (as if dyslexia means you're automatically unintelligent) was just ridiculous. Oh, and of course the Devil chooses a kid who has been maligned by society because they basically have to choose whether or not to become Jesus by taking tons of abuse and then dying for everyone else's sins. ::rolls eyes yet again::

The imaginary world is Hell. The hissing lady who is portrayed as the bad guy is actually Eve, and she needs to keep the Devil in Hell. Because, as always, women are punished for their "sins" and are also tasked with keeping men in line. Here's an idea, hissing lady Eve -- instead of scaring kids half to death and tormenting them, how about revealing what's actually happening to get them on your side? Ugh.

I had to force myself to keep reading. Many times, I stopped and thought, "I just can't". And you probably shouldn't either.

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky is a bit hard to explain. It’s bitterly cynical and disturbing yet “fun” is the word that comes foremost to mind in explaining my time with it. I was always engaged and enjoyed nearly every page. Yet, nearly every page has some aspect that seems rough and not well thought out. Next, this book is too long, bloated, and filled with repeated lines. Yet somehow, I would also describe the overall flow as fast-moving, exciting, and rarely boring. So it’s hard to make sense of how to even sum up this one- which is fitting! Since the last 200 pages or so are best described as chaotic and equally vexing. That said, I really enjoyed my time with it.

Lets start with the good.

- The protagonist, Christopher, is endearing. He is likable and easy to support, so when things get horribly dangerous for him (which is often) the tension was effective.
- A spooky, haunted environment. In this case, a forest full of secrets and an alternate world with surreal horror imagery.
- The family bond. Aside from Chris I also adore his mom. They struggle so much and I was ready to riot in the streets if they didn’t end up okay. There are a couple pages toward the end that really tear at the heartstrings. I can’t remotely relate to a mother-son bond yet was touched by this aspect
- Cerebral horror instead of gory horror. There are some gross passages but the horror is by and large surreal, psychological, or just spooky/creepy and makes thoughtful references to past traumas of the characters.
- The storyline is reminiscent of other horror series/stand-alones I’ve liked. Some horror properties come to mind like Stephen King’s It with the endearing kids, Nightmare On Elm Street with the constant and horrible nightmare sequences, and mystery/horror series about towns that gradually succumb to hostile forces like Twin Peaks, Stranger Things, The Tommyknockers. The concept of peacefully productive days and terrifying nights is also a theme. Basically, this book tries it all which is good considering the length.
- There are a handful of tense chase scenes that are well done. I had the urge to skim them because of the tension.
- The description calls this literary horror and the narrative does seem concerned with delving into the psyche of the characters.
- Christopher, Ambrose, and Chris’s mom Kate are fantastic characters. There was a section of the book where I was all but screaming that nothing better happen to Kate, she is everything.

Now for the drawbacks.

- This book is too long. I can imagine this being a DNF for many people. The length does not feel justified, and I really think this book could have been better if a lot of aspects were re-thought, truncated, or removed altogether.
- There are repetitive moments used for artistic effect that came off as awkward rather than insightful. The typographical eccentricities just come off as silly. The writing in general veers from well done to questionable.
- There are some deeply unlikable side characters along the way. Too many of them, so many that I barely cared what was going to happen to the town at large. There are some good reasons why the side characters act the way they do but it can be unpleasant to read about their behavior. The occasional shifts to other points of view frequently doesn’t serve a marked purpose aside from adding to the bloat.
- The female characters are often poorly written (minus Kate) honestly, I think having only Christopher’s POV would have been better. There were some scenes having to do with Mary Catherine that were laughably unconvincing for a teenage girl.
- There is a thick atmosphere of depression that permeates this story. Plus a cynicism to the writing that just had me convinced all things would end badly.

So long story short, I recommend proceeding with caution on this one and there are definitely some bones to pick. But I rate based off of enjoyment and it’s undeniable how persistently readable this ended up being. Messy, but engaging. There was no point where I wanted to DNF and honestly, as aforementioned, every bit was fun albeit in a morbid way.

Why You Should Check It Out – Spooky, lengthy horror. A haunted forest and alternate worlds, horrifying dream sequences, and a likable mother-son team. The pacing was good enough to make this one engrossing despite several flaws. The likable characters, while few, really captured my attention.

Why You Might Not Like It – The writing style makes use of repeated lines and weird typography that is more silly than insightful. Too many deeply unlikable side characters. Needlessly long. There is a grandiosity to the scope of the mystery (this is a good thing) but whether it is followed through with properly will be up to individual readers, I found it messily handled but still worthwhile.

Note : I received an e-ARC of this book from Netgalley for the purpose of review.

This was an interesting premise, and I do have to say I enjoyed the characters. Even though I usually cannot stand books with multiple POVs, this did not bother me. It was a little creepy, a little o teresting, but just way too long. It definitely could have been edited down from 700 pages for a much tighter story, I’m afraid I just got too bored.

I have been a fan of this author's for quite some time and this book didn't disappoint. I was turning pages as fast as I could, just trying to get to the end. But when i got there I was sad it was over.

This is a book that wants to be a horror story, but presents itself as a science fiction/Christian allegory. I kept waiting for the horror aspects to kick in but eventually accepted that the author was heading in a different direction. The title and summary were misleading and reader's beware, Christian themes abound in this book.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Received an arc from NetGalley for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for giving me the opportunity of reading this amazing book. As soon as I heard that Stephen Chbosky was writing another book I got insanely excited, without even knowing what the book was about. What I had in mind was something in the same genre as his last book, Perks of Being a Wallflower. This book is almost the complete opposite of that, and for that I am grateful.

This book was very intimidating to me. 700 freaking pages. For some people that's nothing. They can read four times that amount in a month! Well this book took me a majority of the month to read.. meaning I didn't read much else. I was not disappointed by this book in the slightest though, so I'm not upset that I haven't read any other books. Before jumping into this 700 pages seemed like an excessive amount, and some of the other reviews I have seen believe that this book could've been shorter. And I agree, but I don't at the same time. This book would've have been as intense or crazy had it been any shorter. The action-packed last half of the book would've felt incredibly rushed had this book been shorter.

Chbosky truly took me for a ride. It was like riding a roller coaster that starts out really slow, but the intensity continues to grow as you climb up the incline of the plot. But as you're climbing the incline, everything goes pitch black so you can't anticipate what the rest of the ride entails. Before you know it, everything is speeding up and there are so many unexpected twists and turns that continue until the very end of the ride. That is this book in a nutshell. The first half of the book builds the story, creates a foundation for you to feel connected to the characters. Not just Christopher or Kate either but also for the side characters that you barely know anything about, you learn just the perfect amount to remember them and their stories later down the line. All of the characters had their quirks but that is what made them interesting. The different backstories and unsaid trauma that they've gone through left me intrigued and wanting to know more about them.

Another part that made both the characters and the overall story more enjoyable was the attention to detail. I feel like this book would've been very lackluster had there not been such carefully placed descriptions throughout the entirety of the book. You know the details of the setting, characters, their thoughts, the vibe of the room and other people surrounding the scene. It makes it feel more true to life, at least in the first half. The descriptions in the second half of the book are meant to incite fear. It's supposed to be as crazy as it sounds. The fact that that first part seems so real due to the descriptiveness, it makes the second half more crazy like, "How is this happening?? There is no way this is really happening..."

I had many guesses throughout the book of what was going to happen and none of my guesses were correct. Usually I know I'm far off but this time I felt like my intuition about the nice man was close, but I couldn't have been more off. I loved how it kept me guessing. I was never bored with what was going on because something was always happening, even if it was subtle.

Another thing I liked was how the plot connected all of the characters. It wasn't like they were all separate. Some parts of the plot connected a set of characters and then one of those characters to another and another. That is another part that made me feel so invested in all of them is because their stories were all somehow related, at least that's how I saw it.

Usually this isn't a genre I would pick up, but based on how much I enjoyed this book, I would definitely pick up another horror based book. And I would very much recommend this to people who like horror or suspense filled books.

This is definitely THE most difficult review I’ve had to find the wording for so far.
Not because this book was an extreme in a positive or negative way, it’s just that I HONESTLY don’t know how I feel about it at all.

I know that I absolutely loved the beginning. We meet little Christopher and his struggling mom Kate.
Things have been rough since Christopher’s father committed suicide.
Christopher struggles in school and has a hard time socializing, poor Kate just works her butt off to try and make their life the best she can for her boy.

When Christopher mysteriously goes missing in the woods for a week only to suddenly reappear a little bit “different”, this is where things start getting weird.

The first part of this book I literally couldn’t put down, especially once Christopher found his little group of friends.
The scenes of all of them together had a nostalgic style of writing to them, I was instantly reminded of some of the classic Stephen King novels.
His ragtag group of misfits were always a wonderful contrast to the horror aspect, and that’s something that was also very well balanced here. For a while.

But then, the creepy started to become less creepy and veer into more bizarre.
And the bizarre just eventually overtook the plot. Sometimes, that works for me, and sometimes you lose me, and that’s what kept happening here.
It was like, I love the bones of the story, but not the meat because sometimes it was TOO much.

My mind was being messed with so much I found myself torn between frustration because: WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON, I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT’S REAL ANYMORE?!,
And yet, needing to continue on just to figure out the ending.

I suppose if you’re an author, especially of this kind of novel, that IS your ultimate goal.
So, maybe this book has done exactly what it was meant to.

Aaaah! This is a review that’s more like a non-review because I honestly STILL don’t know what to say about it.

Here’s how I can summarize it:
It was like a never ending mind F*
And, depending on who you are, that’s either EXACTLY what you’re looking for, or, you’ll know it’s not for you.

I have to give it a 2.5 ⭐️

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for a review!

I will distribute this review among my other platforms soon.

Christopher has had too much trauma in his young life - his dad is dead and mom's latest boyfriend is an abusive creep which is how he and his mom ended up in this little out of the way town. Instead of life calming down, Christopher gets more agitated and becomes driven to sneak out at night building his treehouse and doing anything else the "nice man" tells him to do. Mom doesn't really know how to help Christopher and is becoming more and more alarmed at the whole conversations her son is having with a plastic bag (his imaginary friend). This is pure horror - good people dealing with stuff way over their heads and involving children. Classic battle of good and evil and a must for fans of Stephen King, Joe Hill, and other horror writers. If I could have read this 700 plus page novel with my fingers covering my eyes I would have. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.