Title: Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Genre: Contemporary, Horror
Length: 721 pages
Book Rating: C+
Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley
Summary:
A young boy is haunted by a voice in his head in this “haunting and thrilling” epic of literary horror from the #1 NYT bestselling author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower (John Green).
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 awful 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 tree house 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.
Review:
Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky is a “hold onto your hat, it’s going to be a bumpy ride” horror novel.
Fleeing an abusive relationship, Kate Reese and her seven year old son Christopher sneak away in the night to move to Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. The small town has an excellent school system which is important to Kate. Christopher soon settles into school and dodges bullies while making friends with Eddie Anderson and twins Mike and Matt. After a string of lucky coincidences, Kate purchases a house on the edge of the Mission Street Woods. Despite repeated warnings to stay out of the woods, Christopher disappears for a week after he is lured into the woods by an otherworldly force. He has no memory of what happened during the time he was missing and life soon resumes for mother and son.
However, Christopher is not quite the same following his misadventure and while some changes are welcome, others are very worrisome. After becoming fixated on building a tree house in the woods, Christopher enlists Eddie, Matt and Mike to help him with the elaborate construction project. With dire warnings that life will end on Christmas Day, Christopher is soon embroiled in a dangerous race against time to help the Nice Man defeat the Hissing Lady.
The entire premise of the novel is extremely intriguing and the world building is phenomenal. The main characters are appealing but some of the secondary characters are a little one-dimensional. The horror elements are brilliantly executed and truly spine tingling. The suspense builds to an incredible pitch as danger erupts in Mill Creek and the residents mysteriously fall ill just days before Christmas. Christopher remains tightly focused on his attempts to do the Nice Man’s bidding in order to save himself and everyone around him.
Imaginary Friend is an ingenious horror novel that is clever yet also overly long (721 pages), unevenly paced and a bit repetitive. Late in the novel, a HUGE plot twist takes the story in a completely unexpected direction. A “good vs evil” battle ensues and plunges the reader into an alternate world. With even more shocking and diabolical turns, nothing is as it seems and Christopher, Kate and their friends are enmeshed in an epic fight that has decidedly religious overtones. Stephen Chbosky keeps readers on the edge of their seats as the novel comes to an action-packed conclusion.
