Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky Review

Imaginary Friend

by Stephen Chbosky

Add to Goodreads

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 Christopher at her side. 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. Soon Kate and Christopher find themselves in the fight of their lives, caught in the middle of a war playing out between good and evil, with their small town as the battleground.

 

 

 

Stephen Chbosky is best known for his debut novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower and his works within film and TV, but his long awaited return to novels came at last just under a year ago. On October 1st, his monstrous, 700-page horror thriller Imaginary Friend made its way into the world and onto my list of Five Must Read Thrillers for Autumn. 

It’s been a year since I wrote that post, but I’ve finally gotten around to reading Imaginary Friend. And it was not what I was expecting. I knew to expect a thriller with notes of horror, but, sadly, I was not all that thrilled or horrified by the end of this novel. 

I loved the premise of this novel. There was a lot about Chbosky’s approach to this story and the basic setup that was reminiscent of Stephen King, and I enjoyed it. It had the panoramic quality that King stories often have, with a cast of secondary characters we occasionally check in with to give the story a town-wide feeling. While I think Chbosky did a great job of weaving all the characters’ stories together and creating such a large-scale picture of his plot, the end result wasn’t what I had hoped for. Imaginary Friend is an ambitious story, but it didn’t live up to its own potential. 

Imaginary Friend began so strong. I was hooked from the start and only grew more so as the story progressed—but only for so long. I loved the way Chbosky introduced the strange elements and set the plot in motion. It felt like a classic approach, with a child noticing small oddities in a simplistic and accepting childlike manner and interacting with some unseen, unknown figure. It was intriguing and unsettling and, though it was a familiar premise, it felt unique and not trite. Everything unfolded in a quiet, unhurried manner, and developed at a pace that felt organic to the story. It was intriguing. I needed to know what would happen. 

There were many aspects of Imaginary Friend that I thought were well done and that kept me interested for much of the novel…but not all of it. Though I could pinpoint elements I was enjoying, I was not enthralled with the story as I wanted to be. I was certainly kept curious, but the story was falling short for me in ways I can’t quite nail down. For much of the story, I didn’t feel fully immersed, as much as I liked what I was reading and where I thought it could be going. Was this an issue of the writing itself? I’m not sure. I generally find that I don’t feel creeped out or frightened by horror books and many thrillers have failed to make me as tense or excited as I’d like, and Imaginary Friend was no exception. Chbosky did a great job of weaving together several story threads and making the story feel wide and far reaching, and he balanced it well by not skimping on any detail and really fleshing every character and scene out. Still, Imaginary Friend didn’t have the impact I wanted it to have. I liked a lot about this story and enjoyed reading it, but it never quite reached the level I wanted it to. I felt as if there was a cap on how much I could enjoy it. 

The plot went places I really didn’t expect, and not necessarily in a good way as it neared the end. I enjoyed the slow build and that I couldn’t nail down exactly where the story was headed for most of the book. I found the imaginary world and the way it interacted with and blended with the real world curious and interesting. I liked the unsettling simplicity of some of Christopher’s involvement—building the treehouse, for example. It’s so childlike and simple but what it amounted to was unexpected and dark. I like how the imaginary world bled into the real one and the ways it impacted Christopher. There was a mystery of the past that affected the present and I really enjoyed how it was woven throughout the narrative. I liked the elements of horror, though they didn’t have as much impact on me as I would’ve liked, and I think Chbosky did a fantastic job building tension and excitement by dipping in and out of characters’ POVs. The wide-ranging storylines developed so well, both in regards to each other and also in the sense that it constantly felt like we were building up to something that would tie all of it together. There were several surprising moments and at least one twist I had wondered at but was still shocked by. It was really good—even the way in which it was revealed was perfect. There was so much about Imaginary Friend that I liked, but I just didn’t love it. 

For most of the novel, I thought everything was coming together to reach a fantastic climax, but as the story progressed, I wasn’t sure how enthusiastic I was about the direction of things. I was intrigued by everything that was happening for most of the book—until suddenly I wasn’t. I can’t point out why the revelations of this story weren’t to my taste without spoiling the direction they go in, but I don’t love overly preachy, simplistic story wrap ups. I saw where it was going at one point and truly didn’t mind—I was even excited by a certain twist that was truly surprising—but then it snowballed very dramatically from that point on. It became something cheesy and took too long to actually end the story. I appreciate that Chbosky didn’t tie everything up unbelievably quickly, but it felt like the same conflict just kept going and going. Though I have to say, even though I didn’t enjoy the ending, I liked how clever part of it was. Imaginary Friend stuck too firmly to delivering a message and being quite literal and dampened my enjoyment of the rest of it.

The characters were quite well written. Though several of them began as a bit archetypal, they were fleshed out very well and made real. My only real criticism is that I think Chbosky stretched the boundaries of believability with Christopher and his friends. Though the circumstances of the story explain it, I think they were far too mature and did far too much that seven-year-olds just wouldn’t be able to. I understand the reasoning behind it within the story, but sometimes I forgot just how young Christopher was and it was jarring when I remembered. In a way, that’s impactful and adds to the strangeness of the story. It’s unsettling and uncomfortable to think of such young children doing what’s done in this book. But mostly, I felt that Chbosky could’ve made the kids a little older and delivered the exact same story and impact but made it more believable. Seven is so, so young. 

Imaginary Friend was a strange reading experience. There was so much that I liked and saw potential in and I enjoyed how much of it played out, but my enthusiasm only went so far and the end was not to my liking. I’m sure many people will like it more than I did, so I’d recommend giving it a shot for yourself. For me, what it did well could not make up for the fact that I didn’t love how it all came together. Though I took some time before writing this review in order to collect my thoughts, I still have mixed feelings and feel that even my own thoughts are contradictory and unclear. I liked enough of it to enjoy reading it, but I didn’t like it enough. Imaginary Friend was 700 pages of good story, when it could’ve been great story.

3/5

Have you read Imaginary Friend? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading, 

Madison