I have never read The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I watched the movie, but only distractedly. I could see, however, why for many it could have been a defining teenage read. Chbosky seemed to get to the nitty gritty of being a teenager, addressing some difficult topics while also occasionally romanticizing things. I was hoping for something along those lines in Imaginary Friend, but I'm not entirely sure what I ended up with. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Since writing The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Chbosky has focused on screenwriting, making Imaginary Friend his first novel since 1999. It forms a major departure in both genre and style. Horror is a hard genre to nail. Although we all share certain deep fears in our Unconscious, we still all have different fright levels. Over the decades of his career, Stephen King has risen to the very top of the genre due to his ability to find those deep fears and play with them masterfully. He nails the slow build up of dread, the horror of a wise-before-their-age child, the monsters that hide in the dark, and above all, the cruelty of a grown up world. Each of these are frequently mimicked, but hardly ever truly surpassed. Imaginary Friend plays with many of the same themes: lost children, dark woods, cruel adults, the question of what is good and what is evil. Chbosky's novel left me truly torn, as I did enjoy it, but only finished it through sheer stubbornness and perseverance.

The set-up for Imaginary Friend is brilliant. A young boy and his mother arrive in a quiet, solitary town and shortly after, he disappears into the woods for days. When he returns he has changed and slowly the town around him begins to boil over. This roughly describes the first 2/3rds of the Imaginery Friend, at which point the novel seems to lose focus and becomes messier. An ending is difficult, especially if you're trying to imbue your scary story with the larger imagery of religion, conflict, Good vs. Evil, the Final Stand, etc. What this results in is that Imaginary Friend drags on. You can't help but lose interest after the second 'Do or Die' moment, which just ends in setting up the next 'Do or Die' moment. The twists and turns also keep coming, asking more and more suspension of disbelief from the reader. The stakes simply aren't high enough anymore at that point because you can only take your reader to the breaking point so often before it stops being dramatic or, well, good. I also had an issue with how cliche some of the imagery and character development is. My issue isn't that the tropes or characteristics are recognizable, it's that they're passe and never mined for anything deeper than their surface. The women in this novel are subjected to some truly horrible experiences, suffering both physically and mentally in a way the male characters don't. It is undeniable that unfortunately violence is a part of many women's lives, but Chbosky does nothing with these topics in his novel, which means that it comes across slightly antiquated and, again, cliche. The same is true for the religious imagery and themes in the book. You can see them coming from a mile off, but in the end they fell flat for me.

The novel's main problem is that it's way too long. Stephen King is the master of the genre because of how convincingly chilling he can be in few words. Imaginary Friend doesn't seem to stop. It gets more and more elaborate in its hundreds of pages which only weighs the progress of the narrative down. The cause for this is that Chbosky seems too enamored with his own mythology to cut out what was unnecessary. There are frequent repetitions of images and even language that become eye-roll inducing rather than scary. Many of the ideas and themes in Imaginary Friend are truly scary and could have a lot of impact, but being repeated so frequently they lose all their power. This means that, unfortunately, the payoff at the end is not really worth the journey. This also plays into the novels other problem: the many points of view. Much of it is told from Christopher's perspective, which means we're viewing Chbosky's world through the eyes of a 7-year old.. Christopher is a well-written character and the reader does start to genuinely care about him. However, too much is placed on his shoulders, both within the story and as a narrative device for the story itself, which means he becomes rather unbelievable towards the end. Aside from him, there is a whole array of characters, each of which has their narrative described in detail, which slows the whole novel down.

Imaginary Friend is both an homage to Stephen King, as well as an attempt to dethrone him, it seems. Chbosky goes to great lengths to create a mythology of his own and thereby loses the plot and the reader. At over 700 pages, Imaginary Friend asks too much of its reader without offering enough in return.

I only read part of this book before putting it aside. When I requested it, I had no idea it was over 700 pages. Given the length of the book, I would have expected to be much more consumed by the story by the 50% mark. DNF.

Young boy and his mom on the run from an abusive relationship find shelter in a small town. After the boy disappears for six days, however, he reappears with a new found intelligence and the ability to see things others can't. I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn't grab me. The. characters were not very likeable and the book is way too wordy.

This book gave me literal nightmares! For a book to do that, it has to be powerful. This story was so well written and I felt heavy nostalgia vibes at the beginning of the book. Looking at other reviews, this book has been met with mixed reviews. Yes, it did wane for me toward the end of the book and the ending was a bit disorientating, but I thoughouly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.

Nail-biter read! I read in one sitting! I began this book around 8:00 pm and the time flew by so fast, I heard early morning birds singing around 6:30 am! It was that good. A deeply involving story that kept me on a true emotional rollercoaster ride. With the lifelike flawed but likable characters, I became part of the story. What an amazing read. I couldn’t get enough.

Kate Reese and her son Christopher, flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night and end up in the small community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania - just one highway in, one highway out.
Everything seems to be going well until Christopher disappears for six days. When Christopher was found, he seems to be a different person – one who doesn’t struggle with reading or learning, helping her mother win the lottery, and a voice that is telling him to build a treehouse in the woods by Christmas, or something terrible may happen to everyone.

I absolutely adored this book! Though it is 700+ pages, the book read very quickly. It had a lot of elements of the supernatural and it is quite scary in some parts. Horror is not my genre but I simply adored this book. Maybe it’s because I loved Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower from 20 years ago and seeing that he is back with this book really piqued my interest.
I am so glad I read this amazing book. I loved every page of this masterpiece.

Thank you Netgalley and Grand Central Pub for the arc ebook copy.

I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone's imagination. - Hunter S. Thompson

When I got this book as an Advanced Reading Copy I did not notice beforehand that it was over 700 pages long. I'm glad I didn't notice because I probably wouldn't have started reading it. And I'm very glad that I read this book.

Most of the book reminded me of a Stephen King horror novel - and that's a good thing in my opinion.

The book starts out with single mom Kate Reese fleeing an abusive boyfriend with her young son Christopher. They end up in a small town in Pennsylvania.

Kate and Christopher live in a motel while Kate tries to get back on her feet. Then Christopher disappears in the nearby woods for six days - and he comes back changed.

The author did a great job with giving us characters to care about. There are many characters and many interlinking stories. The book WAS long but it kept me engrossed all the way through.

This is a story about good and evil and I know (after reading the book) that some readers had issues about how good and evil were portrayed. I actually raised an eyebrow a few times during the story. But I still think this is one of the best horror books I've read. Dive into it remembering it's fiction and you shouldn't have a problem with it.

Highly recommended.

I received this book from Grand Central Publishing through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

I was excited to start this book, as I was a fan of Chbosky from the moment I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
So an author who's book I previously loved paired with one of my favorite genres--horror? I'm all in! Unfortunately I did not fall in love with this book. For me, it felt heavily influenced by Stephen King and if compared, could not even hold next to any of King's work.
Chbosky is still an excellent writer and I continuously found myself falling in love with certain lines. And while his character's felt real and believable, Christopher did not read like a 7 year old. Another problem with characters was that almost all of the females in the story where put into an over-sexualised boxes that made their characters useless for the overall plot.

All in all, while I wasn't surprised with the ending or plot-twists, I still had an overall good time reading Imaginary Friend and can't wait to see what Stephen Chbosky comes up with.

I believe I'm giving this book a 3.5 star rating. Its so hard to rate, because the book was so long (700 pages), and I REALLY enjoyed the first 500 page alot! I couldn't believe how easy it was to get immersed into the story right away, and even though I read this book over a month, it was so easy to pick it back up and jump right back into the story each time.
I LOVED how spooky and frightening this book was! I would love to see it as a movie, and I think a lot of people would enjoy it. The storyline is so original!
I would have totally rated this a little higher, if only those last 200 pages had been good. We get a great plot twist I didn't see coming at page 552, but then after that, the book goes downhill fast. The last 200 pages were very unnecessary, it felt like I was reading the same back and forth storyline over and over again, it was honestly a hot mess. A lot of it didn't make sense and it didn't wrap up the way I would have hoped.
All in all, I would totally read another book by Stephen, and I'm glad I read this one! It was perfect for the halloween season!

This felt like I just read the best collaboration novel from Stephen King, Joe Hill, and Peter Straub.
What a ride!

Creepy, dark, and really messed up, this 700+ page book keep me thoroughly entertained from start to finish. Imagine Stranger Things on steroids.

If you're looking for the perfect spooky book just in time for Halloween, look no further!

ARC provided by NetGalley

Imaginary friend starts off slow and gentle, makes you start to feel a bit uneasy, then takes off like a rollercoaster with no safety belts. I read a bit here and there until I got about a third of the way in (and enjoyed what I was reading), and then couldn't put it down. I had to know what was happening, what was real, what was not, and how it was going to turn out. The book was a little shocking at times, occasionally confusing (temporarily so), but definitely thrilling. All of the apparently separate storylines come together perfectly in the end. It leaves the reader with enough of a question to keep thinking about it long after it ends, but not enough for the ending to be unsatisfying.

This was alright in the sense that there was nothing wrong with it, but the characters were unusually dull. Like, I really can't imagine a world in which I care about what happens to these people.

This is a hard book for me to review. There are so many things that I both liked and disliked about it, but I don’t want to give too much away.

Things I liked: The story is unique and compelling and I couldn’t put it down. The characters are flawed but interesting. Their individual storylines and the dynamics between them all are woven together in a great way.

Things I disliked: The age of the main character (7) just didn’t seem to fit. I have a 5 year old boy and I can’t imagine how a 7 year old boy could do all the things in this book. It would have made a lot more sense to me if Christopher had been around 10. The religious storyline that doesn’t show up until halfway through the book made me a little uncomfortable. The 2nd half of the book also got confusing to me and it was hard to keep it all straight. There was too much going on and it felt like I was reading a completely different book.

Wow! This book had me from the first page to last. I was completely enthralled by this story and it was incredibly creepy. I love that the writer wrote in so much detail about the characters and the story itself. I hadn’t read his previous book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower but I had heard amazing things. When I read the synopsis to this story a knew it was right up my alley. My only drawback was that it was extremely long but I also felt that it allowed the author to put in all the details that he felt needed.

I really wanted to love Imaginary Friend. After reading the synopsis, I was expecting a scary read. Instead, I got a strange, not completely clear, religious diatribe about the devil, angels and possibly the virgin Mary (?). I'm not sure. I mean I think the author was going for a good vs. evil theme. However, it really failed to produce. The book was way too long. There were too many perspectives. Don't get me wrong, the book started out great. Very creepy and I wanted to know more. But somewhere about the midway point, it lost momentum.

I also want to comment on the age of the main character, Christopher, and his friends. I really wish that authors would be more accurate with children's ages and behaviors. There is no way a seven year old would be able to get away with or do the things that these kids did throughout this entire book. There is a scene where the parents drop their second graders off at a hill for sledding and then leave them there for the day with no adult supervision. What parents do that? They all talked more like they were in middle school. Even right down to the way the two "mean" kids in their class acted. Their insults were too mature for seven. I probably would have bought into it more had they been in middle school.

I'm not sure I would really recommend this one. The synopsis really didn't prepare me for all of the religious symbolism. Not that I am opposed to it, I just wasn't really sure what the author's goal was with the book.

This book is unlike anything I've read. The craftsmanship of the writing is unbelievable. While some books that are 700+ pages feel that way, this one flew by. Chilling to the bone. You'll wonder what's imaginary and what's not.

I found this book to be drawn out and tiresome -- not at all what I was expecting, and quite a disappointment.

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky is very different from his first book (Perks of Being a Wallflower) But they’re alike in that they are both full of the horrors families hide everyday - abuse, alcoholism, suicide, bullying.

"A boy disappears into the woods and is never seen again. 50 years later, Christopher is lost in the same woods...but is found after six days. And he's changed. And the nice man is helping him work things out. Because there's something only Christopher can do... )

This book is good vs. evil and full of creepy images. You’ll never look at a deer standing next to the road the same way again. And a full-on Mama Bear. Chbosky takes us on a wild and crazy ride for 720 pages. Well worth your time.

A little too derivative of Stephen King, but really glad I read it. Interesting twist on theology, but as other reviewers have mentioned, a little too lengthy.

This book hooked me from the first page. I loved Kate and her son Christopher and was cheering for a happy ending for them. The story sets up beautifully and then the creep factor sets in until it becomes an all out war of good against evil. I look forward to reading more books by this author.