Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel

As a fan of the musical, I can say this is a great stage to page adaptation. It is emotional and will have you crying. Also, it uses direct quotes from the musical which is always a nice touch for all the theatre nerds out there.

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homulucy's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I love the stage show of Dear Evan Hansen, and I’ve read the book once before…but WOW listening to this was stressful. There were many times where I wanted to yell at Evan to stop lying and being a generally crappy person.
Jared was the best character in this entire book. He’s so funny and blunt and Evan should’ve listened to him. His reaction to finding out how Evan broke his arm was pure gold.

You fell out of a tree. What are you, an acorn?

The novel gives chapters to Connor, which the stage show wasn’t able to do. It was nice being able to see inside of him past what we see from Evan’s perspective.
The best part of listening to the audiobook instead of reading the book were the additions of sung versions of Requiem and Only Us. It was a really sweet detail, that wasn’t necessary, but enhanced the overall experience of listening to Dear Evan Hansen. They should’ve done that with the other songs, because the other songs get translated into conversation in a way that I found oddly funny.
Overall, great for both fans and non-fans of the musical/movie.

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mjenae's review against another edition

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5.0

This book destroyed me.
But that ending. I feel strangely calm now. Like how Evan must feel... like I've fallen with him, landed, and the only thing left to do is get back up.
Because you can't change the past, and you can't change how other people will react to it. But you can change the way you react. You can change the present—and maybe not just for yourself.
Maybe, even if the hand never came for you, you can be the hand reaching down to help someone up.
It's the least we can do, really.

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laurel_delaney's review against another edition

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3.0

Okay, wow. I’ve been a fan of the musical for awhile, bought this book over a year ago! I’ve had it for a long long time and never read it. I finally decided to and wow. I always knew the story was kinda an “odd” story. It’s really weird the whole concept of a dude pretending to be a dead guys friend to help the grieving family feel better and then in turn (unintentionally? Maybe? I think unintentionally??) get closer to the dead guys sister who he’s always had a crush on? It’s weird! But, with that being said the book is good especially for coming from a rlly rlly weird concept. I can say I would “like the book more if the concept wasn’t so weird” but then it would be a totally different book. This book has so many “Wtf?” Moments in it. I don’t really like the book, and I think it’s given the musical a whole new point of view for me. I still enjoy it and I’m glad I read it but wow… it’s really weird. Evans troubling anxiety is often relatable and

I’m glad at the end of the book he finds out the Murphys forgive him, and he accepts him self

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