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babewiththepower.bsky.social · @babewiththepower.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated The Perks of Being a Wallflower 6/10

A nice book and a really easy read. At first the diary style was fun, but after a while it got annoying. I started wishing it had just been writen as a standard novel. The writing of the main character was kind of bad at first, too, but then suddenly miraculously improved and for that I was thankful. As for the story itself, I'd initially started getting impatient because it seemed like it was going to be another one of those cliche "coming of age" stories. In a way it was, but I think what really made this book was the way the author approached some serious topics that suddenly come out of the blue.<br/><br/>I actually put the book down for a while because it got depressing and serious really fast at one point. Not to worry, though, because it didn't delve TOO deeply into the situations and it soon picked up again. I suppose that for a YA book that's the way it's supposed to be. It WAS also only 213 pages long, so there was no time to really get into it. But it has some of everything in it: drugs, physical abuse, mental illness, homosexuality, family death, you name it. The guilt the main character carries over his Aunt is sad, but I either missed something or the author really leaves you hanging on the why of what happened with his old friend, Michael. I guess I'll never know? I can't decide if the girl with whom he's in love, Sam, is a MPDG. If she's not, then she really leans towards one.<br/><br/>I think I would've given this more stars if this had been a longer, more in-depth novel than this, but considering it's seemingly for teens, I suppose it does its job. I'm interested how the movie treats this book. I realize it was done by the author himself, which is infinitely rare. There were two things I just can't see making it to the screen. One I won't mention because it would be a book spoiler involving Sam near the end of the book, but the other was one thing I found really exasperating about Charlie: he kept bursting into tears at the drop of a hat. Constantly! Just no, I can't see some studio exec or whoever letting a nearly mentally-handicapped seeming teenaged boy constantly being weepy.

#book

Published 2026-08-18 18:00 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere