Book Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know that a lot of people LOVE this book, but it just didn’t do it for me. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, as I did. I just didn’t enjoy it as much as similar coming of age/young adult type of books that I have read recently.

I read this book after seeing a lot of recommendations for it and managed to get hold of a Kindle copy to sate my curiosity. The book is written in a diary format using letters to an unknown person. I liked this style of writing as I have read a number of other books written in a similar way and if used well, it can be very effective.

The book follows a number of characters, but is written from the point of view of a 15 year old boy named Charlie. Charlie is a bit of an outsider who starts hanging around with some older kids and we follow a year of his life through his letters.

The book itself touches on a number of subjects such as drug use, mental ill health, sexuality and death and I think deals with them quite well. I do think that mental ill health could have been expanded a bit more as Charlie’s psychiatrist plays such a big part in his life, but there may be reasons for it being written the way it is.

I have given this book three stars as although I enjoyed it, it wasn’t unputdownable and I didn’t feel as though I connected with Charlie as well as I have with the main characters of similar books. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I had read it when I was younger as I experienced similar feelings of being an outsider when I was a teenager. Overall, a good read, but if you enjoy this, there are some better young adult books dealing with similar themes out there.


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