Author: Stephen Chbosky
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: October 1, 2019
Book Description: 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 long 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 treehouse 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.
Rating: 4 1/2 stars
Review: Let me preface that I picked up this book because I was looking for a good horror story this month. This book comes in at just over 700 pages and it totally exceeded my expectations. It was a slow burn of a book but worth all the time it takes to read.
The story centers around Christopher who has just moved to Mill Grove, PA with his Mom trying to escape a bad relationship. Christopher has trouble in school and making friends, he is growing up very poor, and it seems pretty helpless. Christopher then goes missing for 6 days and everything changes for him.
What comes after is the crux of this horror story. Christopher begins to hear the voice of his imaginary friend, and this opens a whole new world to him. He will have to go on a crusade to stop the evil in the imaginary world to protect his loved ones in the real world.
This was a rich imaginative story and worth every page that Chbosky wrote. The story is relevant to this world we live in. There is a major focus of mental illness that Chbosky portrays with great honesty and care.
If you are willing to put the time into this story, the journey is well worth it. This took just over a week to read, but it will stay with me for a very long time.
Obsessed Bookaholic 