Review Detail

Since joining the book blogging community I’ve heard endless and amazing things about The Perks of Being a Wallflower and with the movie release finally upon us, the compliments just keep on coming.

Chbosky deals with real, impending teen issues such as sexuality, drugs abuse, suicide and teen pregnancy, just to name a few, and though he handled them reasonably well, I just felt that he was trying to cram too much into the book. The short sentences were annoying and resulted in a choppy reading experience but that wasn’t even my main problem.

I could not for the life of me, connect with our protagonist, Charlie. He grated on my nerves, plain and simple. At one point in the story, Charlie’s English teacher tells him he's the smartest person he's ever known and though Charlie has an interesting, very pure way of looking at things and seeing the world, I didn’t agree. For a supposedly super smart 15 year old, his letters were filled with the simplest language possible. There’s also the fact that he felt far too innocent for his age. Altogether, his character and voice just seemed unrealistic.

There were some really beautiful passages and quotes and I love how it got me thinking about things such as my first memory. In fact, I couldn’t wait to get back to it and read more. But Charlie? He irritated me to the extremes. But then *insert sound effects* DUN DUN DUN. I don’t why but after such a long time struggling, things with Charlie started to improve at about the half-way mark. Now, don’t go jumping to conclusions, Charlie and I aren’t friends but we’ve finally come to some sort of an understanding; a truce (or maybe it was just due to the fact that he started to grow on me?).

Despite my problem with Charlie, I liked The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I’m even looking forward to the movie, especially since the trailer looks so awesome; whether I see it in the cinemas or wait for it come out on DVD, I’ll definitely give it a watch.