April Taylor's Reviews > Imaginary Friend

The Perks of Being a Wallflower deserves all the acclaim it has received. Between that and my love of the horror genre, I was really excited when Imaginary Friend was announced. My excitement went even higher when I found out that Chbosky's first book in 20 years was being touted as a literary horror novel. All of these things should have combined into a fantastic reading experience. Unfortunately, it's didn't. At all. As some would say, I just can't even with this book.

The first 50 pages or so were actually quite good and interesting. So, if you've seen the reviews from notable authors, Joe Hill didn't lie. But you may have also noticed that Hill specifically spoke just about the first 50 pages. Want to know why? Because the story veers hard after that, and not in a good way. If I was reviewing just the first 50 pages, this would be a 5-star book. The rest of it plummets it hard to 1-star territory, though.

We spend the next 670 pages inside a Christian story that's so on the nose that it's actually overly kind to call any of it an allegory. After all, by the end there's absolutely no hidden meanings inside Imaginary Friend. And that's one of the most disappointing things of all because the term literary horror typically denotes a much more deeply layered experience that requires contemplation. There's nothing to contemplate here other than Chbosky's apparently skewed view of women, along with the question of why he felt the need to spend 650 pages basically preaching and moralizing.

If you're not into Christian horror dressed up as horror, this book probably won't be for you. Even if you are into Christian horror, this book still might not be for you because it contains a lot of profanity and sexual content that seems to be turning off many reviewers who should have been the book's primary target audience. For the record, I have no issues with the profanity and sexual content, although it sure would have been nice if women weren't portrayed as corrupt entities unable to control their sexuality. There's actually a scene where a virgin teen's sex drive causes her to "corrupt" her Christian, virgin boyfriend by giving him oral sex. ::rolls eyes::

The constant biblical references quickly became annoying and repetitious, as did the rest of the story. Everything was tied into the bible after the first 50 pages or so, and I mean everything. In one section, Chobsky writes that "the children scattered like the parting of the Red Sea" (or something to that effect). This is a prime example of everything being a biblical reference, and these things happen again and again and again, ad nauseam.

I'm pretty sure Chbosky has never met any 7-year-old kids based on the way he portrays them. And it's quite frankly disgusting that he insisted on writing the bully's nickname of one character, "Special Ed," almost every single time the character came up throughout the entire book. And it's not like that was just when people were taunting him. Nope. It comes up when people think about him, when the character is talking ("blah, blah, blah," Special Ed said), etc.

SPOILER ALERT
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Okay, here's the thing -- this book pretends to be something else for a long time, but it's nothing more than the typical good vs. evil, heaven vs. hell story that's been told and retold for centuries. Chobsky does mess with Christian mythology a lot to create his own version of Hell, so at least there's a bit of originality there. But the idea of the Devil trying to escape Hell (every 50 years, apparently... sigh... can we please cancel the trope of 'X bad thing happens every X years?') by finding a dyslexic child and making him smart (as if dyslexia means you're automatically unintelligent) was just ridiculous. Oh, and of course the Devil chooses a kid who has been maligned by society because they basically have to choose whether or not to become Jesus by taking tons of abuse and then dying for everyone else's sins. ::rolls eyes yet again::

The imaginary world is Hell. The hissing lady who is portrayed as the bad guy is actually Eve, and she needs to keep the Devil in Hell. Because, as always, women are punished for their "sins" and are also tasked with keeping men in line. Here's an idea, hissing lady Eve -- instead of scaring kids half to death and tormenting them, how about revealing what's actually happening to get them on your side? Ugh.

I had to force myself to keep reading. Many times, I stopped and thought, "I just can't." And you probably shouldn't either.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.