This was very much a book of two parts for me.

I really enjoyed it to begin with. It felt very atmospheric and I really liked the the subtle way the paranormal aspect was built up through the first part of the book. Up to a point.

As I was getting closer to the 50% mark, I felt like the book was very much building up to an end. I really wish it was, as that would have been a really great and gripping read.

But it just kept going. For me it kept pushing too far, and really just went all in. The ‘other’ aspect just went so far it was no longer creepy for me, it honestly just ended up a bit silly. (Silly I’m fine with, but not in a horror novel).

I’m sure there will be people who enjoy this. For me it was just a let down.

This book really intrigued me from the blurb but it’s 700 pages did put me off a bit when I started it.
The book starts off strong and really pulled me in, but the middle section did drag a bit for me.
The book is about Kate Who is fleeing an abusive relationship by starting over in a new town, with her young son Christopher.
Their world begins to unravel after Christopher vanishes and when he emerges six days later, unharmed, he brings with him a secret - a voice only he can hear.
The characters really come to life and the overall idea of the book is a good one, however it did have a lull around half way through.
There are some great twists and turns, which I didn’t see coming so this helped during the time spent reading this long book.
It’s a good read but had something missing in the middle so could possibly have been made shorter.
Thanks to Orion and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to Net Galley and publisher Orion in exchange for an honest review.

I honestly had no idea what to expect from this book. I was not a fan of Perks of Being a Wallflower but I could not resist reading a book with such a promising and amazingly creepy premise. Imaginary Friend is the story of a boy named Christopher who has just moved to a new town with his mother, Kate. Shortly after the move, Christopher goes missing in the woods for 6 days and reemerges a changed boy. Before he was a normal seven year old, dyslexic and struggling with school. After he is incredibly intelligent...and he can hear a voice in his head.

The first 15% or so of this book is one of the best openings I have ever read. Had the rest of the book maintained this tone, it would have easily been a 5 star read. There is just something so likeable about all of the characters and though it's weird to say in a horror novel, it's actually really comforting to read about their lives. There is still the undercurrent of things about to go wrong but it's so refreshing to read a horror book where no one is an asshole. It's a common horror trope and I didn't realise how sick of it I was until now.

It's a cliche to compare good horror to Stephen King but this honestly has a very similar feel and plot to a King novel, albeit with characters who aren't terrible people. The King quirks aren't present which helps create a unique voice, and I intend this comparison as a compliment rather than a criticism. It doesn't feel derivative, it feels exceptionally well-written.

Sadly I can't say much about what made it drop in rating except for that the plot ultimately just wasn't for me. The book becomes very focused on themes of religion and the horror elements become muddled and hard to follow. By the end I had little idea of what was going on and it made me disconnect from the work. This is mostly down to personal tastes so if you like more abstract horror or books with heavy themes, you may enjoy it more than me.

The only other thing I want to mention is there is a character called 'Special Ed'. This is initially introduced as a cruel nickname some bullies use but then the narrative continues to use it for no real reason. I just wanted to mention it as an odd choice.

Overall, Imaginary Friends is a solid book. I was surprised how engaging I found it given its length, and this was down to both the great writing style and characters. It is mostly the plot that lets it down in the end but I am glad I read it and I can see some readers really connecting with it.

Overall Rating: 3.5

I was lucky enough to receive sample of the first few chapters of this book few months ago, which I really enjoyed, and so I was thrilled to also receive the full novel.  I did have one or two issues with the book, but I am giving it 4 stars because the actual story is really good with plenty of tension and atmosphere, a proper horror thriller.  Also the characters are fantastic and believable, and I particularly liked Christopher and his mother.  But the story gets very repetitive and, in my opinion, it is at least 200 pages too long.  Still, it is worth a read on these cosy autumn evenings, with the light on.

An interesting idea for a story, and well written, however like others have said before me, it’s just too long.
If it were around 400 pages, I really feel the story would be more gripping. A shame about the length, I worry a lot of people would be put off by its 700+ pages, however I’d still recommend this book.

I’ve been reading a lot of great books lately, but this is one of my favourites. I knew that Stephen was the author of ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’. I’ve not actually read that yet, but I know how well liked and known it is, and from this assumed ‘Imaginary Friend’ must be great, despite being a very different genre. I was not disappointed. Though I’ve noticed this book has a lot of bad reviews – they must have been reading a different book to me!

I didn’t realise when I started reading this book (I read via my Kindle) that it was over 700 pages! Did I enjoy every single page? Yes. Could it have been cut down in word count a bit? Probably. In fact, that is one of my only faults. But then again, even if I could have cut the book down, it would only be by a meagre twenty pages or so throughout the entire thing. My other fault is the age of the children. The decisions they had to make and the thinking process of Christopher feel older to me. Personally, I feel they should be 11/12ish.

This book has genuinely shaped the way I see things now. I wait to feel flesh instead of bark on trees and I take a lot more notice of the shapes in the clouds. When I started reading this and found out about the ‘nice man’ portrayed as a plastic bag, I actually went out walking and a plastic bag flew straight in front of me. I smiled and had to refrain from talking to it. It wasn’t JUST a plastic bag to me anymore.

I would love to get into the mind of Stephen. I thought I had a great imagination, but his is just something else. I can usually start a book or film and point out what’s going to happen. 95% of the time I’m usually right. With this, I didn’t catch ANY of the twists. Really hoping Stephen releases more horror!

I really, really hope this gets adapted into a film!

I had high hopes for this book, and was looking forward to reading it. Unfortunately it really wasn’t my kind of story.

Christopher is a seven year old boy who doesn’t have the best of lives, he is bullied at school,because he can’t read, and because his shorts are too short, his mum Kate is a very loving caring person and she does her best with the means they have to live on, but it’s not enough for fancy clothes and nutritional food.

This book is 730 pages long and if you took out some of the repetitiveness it could have possibly have come in at half the pages. Things change for Christopher when he begins to see an imaginary friend. This imaginary friend leads Christopher into the woods not far from his school, where some very odd things begin to happen and not all of it makes sense.

The voice tells Christopher he has to make a treehouse, this is the most important thing he is told to do. It has to completed by Christmas for the imaginary friend or else. Christopher is determined to have the treehouse built, he works both day and night to get it done, he even manages to enlist a couple of friends to give him a hand. Christopher’s life gets more and more strange as the town and imagination become entangled.

There are a few reasons I didn’t enjoy this book, it’s too long as I have said earlier, lots of repetitive bits, some of the writing is very dark and disturbing. Characters being physically assaulted. There is a lot of violence, a fair bit of swearing and some sex. There are lots of deer and weird things that get mixed up in theology. The story at times can be very depressing.

Classed as a horror story, so maybe ,y fault for choosing this as it’s not really a genre I tend to read. I am sure people who like this genre will enjoy this but for me, it just didn’t. Work.

I would like to thank netgalley and Orion publishers for an ARC of this in exchange for a fair, honest and unbiased review.

Kate Reese is a single mother fleeing an abusive relationship by starting over in a new town, with her young son Christopher. But Mill Grove, Pennsylvania, is not the safe place they thought it would be...

Their world begins to unravel after Christopher vanishes into the Mission Street Woods - where 50 years earlier an eerily similar disappearance occurred. When he emerges six days later, unharmed but not unchanged, he brings with him a secret: a voice only he can hear and a warning of tragedy to come.

I’ve never read anything quite like this book before. I found myself very interested in the characters and their growth, particularly Christopher’s mother, Kate Reese. I found this book very unsettling, but not scary.

I’m not really a fan of supernatural works but this one interested me for a while. At 400 pages I thought I would just quit; I couldn’t believe I was only a little more than halfway through. How much more to the story could there be? Truthfully? Not that much. I stayed in it for the characters, it got so repetitive, there was a lot of good stuff but also a lot of filler and sentences wriTeN LiKe tHis that made me want to throw the book at the wall. The characters created by Chbosky are wonderful. His idea for this book is great. I was impressed with the first 400 pages...then it started to drag.

I wanted to love this book. I was so excited to get it. I just can't get over how disappointed I was that the story essentially collapsed and became tedious instead of terrifying. So, to cut a long story short (haha) it has some great twists and turns, I think it had some great imagery and imagination, characters were interesting and fleshed-out and the ending was interesting. This book might be for others, but it wasn’t for me. 3 stars.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Orion Publishing Group for an advance copy in return for a fair and honest review.

I really wanted to love this as much as The Perks of Being a Wallflower but I just didn't connect very well with the story. There are over 700 pages and a lot of these are repetitive and unnecessary - it would have benefited from some serious editing of superfluous material. Some of the messages in the last 100 pages were emotional but I think as an atheist a lot of the power behind the story was lost for me. Hopefully, other readers will take more from this book than I did.

I’m a huge fan of horror or thriller type novels and the fact that this book was written by Stephen Chbosky aka author of one of the most life changing books of my teen years, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, encouraged me to request this book. I was so excited to see it land on my shelf on NetGalley and equally excited to dive right in.

The first thing I have to mention is how vastly different this novel is to Perks. Not only is the genre and story itself worlds apart but it feels significantly darker and delves far deeper into the human psyche. There are a lot of heavy issues covered within the book from domestic violence, infidelity, rape and bullying to name a few. So I would definitely not recommend this to readers who may be triggered by this type of content.

The novel focuses on Christopher Reese, a seven year old boy and his mother who move to the sleepy town of Mill Grove. It seems like the ideal place for their fresh start as they run from Kates abusive ex boyfriend Jerry. Little do they know what is about to take place and how it will truly change their lives as well as the face of the entire town…

One of the novels greatest strengths is the bond between the characters, specifically Christopher and his mother, Kate. I loved the way Chbosky portrayed the intense and unconditional love between mother and son and how thoroughly they understood each other. Despite having such a rough life so far, from dealing with her husbands suicide to trauma in her childhood, Kate is such a resilient character and such an incredible mother to her son. It felt good to read a story where a survivor of trauma like Kate, succeeds and gets a happy ending.

Although at times it definitely feels like Christopher is way older than seven as he has an emotional intelligence and behaviour that surpasses the average seven year old. He really reminds me of Cole, Haley Joel Osments character from The Sixth Sense.

Imaginary Friend covers so much ground. It’s rather long at roughly 700+ pages and because of this, there is room for multiple character pov’s as it switches in and out between the key players in the narrative. I think these multiple viewpoints work in a really effective way to build tension as the story progresses and the evil spreads through Mill Grove.

Now the things I didn’t enjoy so much:

There were a lot of moments particularly in relation to one female character, Mary Katherine, where I was stuck between disturbed and puzzled at the way her ‘character arc’ developed. I get the kind of commentary Chbosky may have been trying to make about religion or repression of female sexuality but it just felt quite bizarre and the ending left me a bit at odds too.

Tying in to the characterisation of Mary Katherine, the novel was like an allegory for a theological argument of some sort and like an epic battle between good and evil, God and the devil. Now, there’s no problem with this per se but it just felt somewhat clunky at times and this whole theological undercurrent didn’t add anything for me, I would have preferred it just be straight up horror or thriller without the whole moral argument.

As well as the above issues, there was so much repetition throughout the novel, it started to get on my nerves. If I never read the word ‘deer’ or ‘plastic bag’ again then I’ll be perfectly happy! I totally understand that it can be an effective tool to emphasise etc but in this case it was overkill.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Imaginary Friend, especially the horror elements as well as the relationships between the characters, however it definitely had some issues which stopped me from rating it more highly. If you’re a fan of Stephen King and thriller novels in general then this book will probably be the right fit for you.

Review to be posted on blog: 23/09/2019

I can't believe that I am giving up on reading this after 67%, but it has become too much. What kept me reading this far is that were some really good creepy and menacing elements that really drew me in. and it began so well. I think the children's age is a potential issue, as I think the book would have worked significantly better if they were older. I liked Christopher a lot, he has had such a tough life, he wants to be all that his mother wants him to be, but the circumstances in which things improve after his disappearance lend a disturbing and unsettling feel to the narrative. However, the narrative meanders far too much and there is too much repetition with insufficient pay off for me as the reader. Many apologies, it just became too much for me.

I'm afraid this wasn't for me. I don't think it was a bad book, although I do think it could have done with a much more rigorous edit, but I do think a lot of people will come to this simply because they loved Perks, and that those people might struggle because this is an entirely different proposition.

DNF: I didn't really gel with this book. Has Stephen Chbosky spent too much time writing for TV? The characters were flat and there were so many clichés even at 10%. Felt a little bit like it's trying to be Stephen King. It might have got better but at 700+ pages, I didn't feel struggling through to the end...

I'm not scared of long books. But long books have to deserve being long, and I'm afraid that for me, this one didn't.
The first 10% or so of the story was really good - I liked Christopher and his mum, and the woods were creepy, and I really wanted to know what was going on. I still bought into the story as the kids are building the tree house. I even still bought into it with the weirdness that starts with the imaginary world, and the hissing lady because it was, at that point, still mysterious and fantastical and intriguing.

But what annoyed me was it just went on. And on. And on.

Every time I felt that perhaps the story was reaching a resolution, oh no, things just got even worse all over again. And some of the writing is very dark, and disturbing. I kept on reading, because I'd made that time investment now and I wanted to see where the story went, but it was hard going, like being mentally battered, as characters within the story were being physically assaulted, and so by the end I wasn't sure I much cared anymore and it was just blessed relief that the whole thing was over! I think it's important to note for potential readers that there's a massive amount of violence, there's quite a bit of swearing and some sex. And good grief there's a LOT of deer and weirdness and mixed up theology. Things get bad, then worse, then worse still, and then you start thinking that you don't trust the author so much anymore because wasn't Christopher just about to die 300 pages ago already and yet here he is, still powering on?

I'd hoped for some sort of revelatory ending, something that would amaze me in some way & pay off all the hard work. It wasn't to be. Which is a shame, because the start of the book really was good, and very promising, and the only reason that this gets 2 stars from me rather than 1.

Not for me. I requested it as a fan of Stephen Chbosky, and my love of discovering books I adore in genres I don't read very frequently. It started off well. Interested, complex, likeable characters and an air of creepy mystery. It started to become strange, but in a good way, and although the book was super long, for a while I was eagerly pushing through to find out what was going on. The final 30% off the book took forever.
It was too much, too weird, not for me. I mean, there will be people who love this book, but this one took me a bit too far from my comfort zone.
Thanks for the chance to read it.

Fans of Stephen King and C.J. Tudor are going to devour this novel in all of its 700 pages of spine chilling glory!

Escaping from an abusive relationship Kate Reese and her son Christopher are starting again, a fresh start in a new town with a new job and a new school. With no money they are living out of a cheap motel but they are safe, or so they thought.

Christopher isn’t the schools brightest students, he has always struggled with reading and maths no matter how hard he try’s. He wants to do well, he wants to make his mum proud. He also wants to have friends, not only because he knows it would make his mum happy and stop her working about him but also so he wasn’t just singled out by the bullies. As Christopher waits for his mum to collect him after school he hears a voice, a face in the sky made out of clouds, and being the curious kind of kid he is, he wanders off, following that voice into the Mission Street Woods where he gets lost. For six days!

After six days he is found safe and sound by one of the local residents and is reunited with his distraught mother. And it is from there that everything for the Reese’s that things start to change. It seems that their luck has turned, not only is Christopher back and unharmed but he gets his first A in a maths test at school. And not only that but their numbers come in on their lottery ticket! Both mother and son are making friends and now they have their very own home, somewhere that is all theirs and no one can take that away from them. But all this good luck comes at a price. One that they had no idea what that cost was.

With his new found understanding of both English and maths comes a voice, one that only Christopher can hear, one that is compelling him to return to the Mission Street Woods, to bring his new friends and to build a tree house, somewhere where they can go that is just for them. But what is it that this voice really wants? Is the voice one of good or evil and what does it want with Christopher?

This book is jam-packed with creepy atmosphere and tension and even though it is a hefty size book it is a really easy read that flies by without you realising the page count. I know there has been a mixed bag of reviews so far but for me I loved it and every page was filled with valuable words and it was compelling reading all they way through. There was a real feel of old school Stephen King and horror fictions new queen C.J Tudor’s style to this book and it is one horror book that I wouldn’t fail but to recommend to anyone! I couldn’t read it quick enough and loved every single page!

Imaginary Friend will be published on 01 October 2019 and can be preordered now.
Massive thanks to the author Stephen Chbosky, publishers Orion Publishing and NetGalley for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest and independent review.

Didn't get into this at all, I am afraid. Nothing wrong with the book, just a poor choice by me - shouldn't have requested it.

This morning I FINALLY managed to finish Imaginary Friend. I started this book and was immediately hooked. It was uber creepy, really well written, I was loving it.

Sadly it was all downhill from there. 700+ pages of which maybe half ended up being relevant/adding to the story. Now I love a tome. I recently read Wanderers which was longer than this one but had zero wasted scenes or words and was an epic that read fast. So it's not the length itself that was an issue. I read King and Tolstoy. Trust me I can cope with a long narrative that you need to commit to.

It was the slogging through endless pages of repetitive nonsense, towards a pay off that irritated me, didn't really make sense and subjectively wasn't worth the effort. It was the eventual realisation that this was one long sermon from which I am supposed to learn something (And boy does the author ram that down your throat ad finitum for the last 20%) It was basically (In my opinion) the author plugging his belief system but disguising it as a horror story. Well you know what you can do with THAT shenanigans.

Too long. Way too long. Even allowing for my very personal reaction to what this book was, and allowing that quite rightly for some readers this novel will resonate in a different way , I honestly believe it needs a HUGE edit. There's so much white noise the plot, the "message" whether that message appeals to you or not, gets lost along the way. It's probably in the woods with about a million deer and a few white plastic bags.