Imaginary Friend

July 15, 2019
Chbosky’s ambitious second novel (after 1999’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower) is a tale of good vs. evil that never gels. Seven-year-old Christopher and his mother, Kate, move to Mill Grove, Pa., after Kate leaves her abusive boyfriend. Kate gets a job at an old folks’ home, and Christopher, who has a learning disability, starts second grade and makes friends with a boy nicknamed Special Ed. One day, Christopher disappears into the Mission Street Woods; he emerges six days later, unscathed—but his learning disability has disappeared. Kate then wins the lottery and buys a new house bordering the woods, where a disembodied voice tells Christopher to build a tree house. Before long, Christopher gets debilitating headaches and strange revelations, a mysterious sickness spreads throughout the community, and a terrifying entity dubbed “the hissing lady” lurks around town. Chbosky brings deep humanity to his characters and creates genuinely unsettling tableaux, including a nightmarish otherworld that Christopher accesses via his treehouse, but considerable repetition extends the narrative while diminishing its impact. Christian overtones (some subtle, others less so) are pervasive, especially in the finale, and add little to the story. This doorstopper is long on words but short on execution. Agent: Eric Simonoff, William Morris Endeavor.

August 1, 2019
Two decades after his debut novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), Chbosky returns with a creepy horror yarn that would do Stephen King proud. "Mom? Will he find us?" So asks young Christopher of his mother, Kate, who has spirited him away from her abusive mate and found a tiny town in Pennsylvania in which to hide out. Naturally, her secret is not safe--but it's small potatoes compared to what Christopher begins to detect as he settles in to a new life and a new school. His friends, like him, are casualties, and that's just fine for the malevolent forces that await out in the woods and even in the sky, the latter the place where Christopher comes into contact with a smiling, talking cloud that lures him off into the ever dark woods. "That's when he heard a little kid crying," writes Chbosky, and that's just about the time the reader will want to check to be sure that no one is hiding behind the chair--or worse, and about the scariest trope of all, which Chbosky naturally puts to work, under the bed. Christopher disappears only to turn up a little less than a week later, decidedly transformed. But then, so's everyone in Mill Grove, including his elementary school teacher, who harbors an ominous thought: "Christopher was such a nice little boy. It was too bad that he was going to die now." As things begin to go truly haywire, Chbosky's prose begins to break down into fragments and odd punctuation and spelling, suggesting that someone other than the author is in control of the fraught world he's depicting. One wonders why Kate doesn't just fire up the station wagon and head down the Pennsylvania Turnpike rather than face things like a "hissing lady" and a townsman who has suddenly begun to sport daggerlike teeth, but that's the nature of a good scary story--and this one is excellent. A pleasing book for those who like to scare themselves silly, one to read with the lights on and the door bolted.

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August 1, 2019
Chbosky's long-awaited sophomore novel (after The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 1999) is less emotionally charged YA and more reminiscent of the epic novels of Stephen King (like 1984's The Talisman). Widow Kate and her 7-year-old son Christopher are fleeing her abusive boyfriend, and they seem to find a soft landing in a small western Pennsylvania town. It quickly becomes apparent that they have been drawn here by forces both loving and malevolent to stop the opening of a portal to hell. Christopher's imaginary friend, who, after he went missing for days, led him out of the woods, seems to hold the key to the terrors that plague their neighbors. With multiple points of view that probe the thoughts and nightmares of characters from all over town, this is an immersive read that walks the line between dark fantasy and horror. With its highly precocious young hero, the novel reads like a season of Stranger Things. Suggest it to readers who enjoyed Thomas Olde Heuvelt's HexDisappearance at Devil's Rock (2016), or anything by Amy Lukavics. HIGH DEMAND BACKSTORY: This book will sell itself to readers who have waited twenty years for a new novel from Chbosky, but horror fans will also be curious.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2019

Seven-year-old Christopher is the new kid in Mill Grove, PA, the fairly secluded town where his single mother, Kate Reese, decided to settle down after leaving an abusive relationship. Christopher struggles in school, Kate needs a job, and they don't have much money, but at least they have each other. Then Christopher disappears for six days. When he emerges from the Mission Street Woods, their luck begins to improve, but Christopher is changed. He finds himself drawn back into the woods where he hears a voice and is given a mission. As he works on his task, a flu breaks out and anger spreads throughout the town. A war is coming and it's beyond what the residents ever could have imagined. This doorstopper literary horror novel is thematically rich and feels cinematic. Short chapters following numerous distinct characters keep the pace quick. Horror is imbued throughout both in gory, terrifying fantasies as well as in the more realistic horror of abuse and neglect. Christian imagery and symbols are sometimes heavy-handed. While the sense of immediacy to keep hearts pounding is always prevalent, the last third of the book feels overly drawn out. VERDICT This epic tale of ultimate good vs. evil is a bit long-winded but still impressive in scope and truly scary.--Jenna Friebel, Oak Park P.L., IL

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2019

Chbosky, who made his name with the multi-million-copy best-selling debut YA novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower, returns with a first adult novel. On the run from an abusive relationship, single mom Kate has brought Christopher to Mill Grove, PA, as isolated as it gets. There, seven-year-old Christopher disappears into the woods for six days and returns with a voice in his head instructing him to build a tree house to save the town. With a 750,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.