By: Stephen Chbosky

When I first heard about this book it was about 7 years ago before it was being made into a movie and I read the first few sample chapters from Kindle then got to reading something else and it fell to the waist side. Then the movie came out and all this hype was put around it, now I’m not one for watching movies based off of books before I read the actual book so I avoided the movie and all mentions of it like the plague.

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The movie is out on DVD so I figure OK, NOW I can read it.

The book is set in the 90’s and is written in a series of letters by “Charlie” to “Dear Friend.” It chronicles his life as a high school freshman who is a loner and awkward to say the least. He meets this brother and sister duo Patrick and Sam who are seniors at a football game when he was trying to “participate” and the three instantly hit if off even though Charlie is younger than them.  The Book or letters tells his story of going through his experience with his friends and you come to find that Charlie is a strange fellow but also special. He cries, A LOT throughout the book and has an odd way of looking at things, through his experience he gets his first kiss, first girlfriend and first breakup, and has his first acid trip and  is just exposed to all the things older kids are exposed to as he is again younger than they are (15). I was pleasantly surprised there was a lot of book time given to The Rocky Horror Picture show as it’s one of my favorites and I hope they kept that in for the movie.

We find out later, not until the very end; when all his senior friends are heading off to college why Charlie is the “way he is” and it blindsided me.

I thought it was one of those quirky coming of age stories and it is, it just has something deeper behind it in the end and Charlie last letter kind of leaves me feeling that he really will be OK. All in all I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars because I did like it, but I am glad I waited on this one.

Admin-Vonetta