{"id":113477,"date":"2019-10-31T15:46:02","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T04:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=113477"},"modified":"2019-12-02T14:32:32","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T03:32:32","slug":"review-imaginary-friend-by-stephen-chbosky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2019\/10\/31\/review-imaginary-friend-by-stephen-chbosky\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Imaginary<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Imaginary Friend<\/a><\/strong><\/em> is not the kind of novel you\u2019d expect Stephen Chbosky to write. It\u2019s certainly miles away from his beloved coming-of-age novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, where he tapped into the difficulties of navigating love and friendship as a teen struggling with mental illness. Instead, this novel is much closer in theme and genre to one written by Stephen King – and is every bit as compelling.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Stephen<\/a>Imaginary Friend<\/em> follows a young boy named Christopher and his mother, a tiny struggling family seeking a new start in Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. While they struggle financially, all seems well until Christopher makes a new \u201cfriend\u201d – and then disappears for six days. His return brings relief to his mother Kate but casts a shadow of evil over the rest of the town. Bodies are unearthed, the past comes back for a haunting and murderous hysteria sweeps through the citizens of Mill Grove. Before long, the fate of the entire town comes to rest on the shoulders of a seven-year-old boy with a horrendous battle between good and evil waging in his head.<\/p>\n\n\n

I\u2019ll admit I\u2019m not a regular reader of horror, but I do love Stephen Chbosky\u2019s writing. I was one of those teens who read The Perks of Being a Wallflower<\/em> and adored it. I loved it for its characters, people who were all insecure and vulnerable but still smart and strong in all the ways that mattered. You should know, then, that Imaginary Friend<\/em> retains that amazing depth of character. Chbosky uses the people of Mill Grove as brilliant vehicles of horror, showing their everyday grievances and hidden neuroses to have roots in much darker forces. In that sense, the horror in Imaginary Friend<\/em> is multifaceted – supernatural but also entirely human, showing us what happens when we let our past traumas mingle with suspicion and fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This behemoth of a novel comes in at around 700 pages, but don\u2019t be daunted by its length. You can fly through 100 pages in one sitting, and there are enough twists and turns to keep you on edge for the whole of the novel (there are also some genuine scares to be found here, so don\u2019t read this when you\u2019re home alone). What I loved most of all, however, is that Imaginary Friend<\/em> shows us how the horror inside our hearts can be just as terrifying as anything conjured up inside our heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Read an extract here<\/a><\/strong>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Don\u2019t read this when you\u2019re home alone.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":113493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6678],"tags":[2460,10608,10607,5830],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/ImaginaryFriend-Social.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113477"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115225,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113477\/revisions\/115225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}