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A review by heathi13
Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky
4.0
I do love a good vs evil story. I also love a thinly-veiled-as-Christian-doctrine good vs evil story. The Stand? The Lord of the Rings trilogy? The Dark Tower series? Some of my very favorite books ever. What I don't love is proselytzing, and having religion forced down my throat. I wish this had been marketed as a Catholic horror book (does such a genre even exist?) instead. I probably still would have read it, because interest piqued to see what that would be about, but at least I would have known what I was getting into. I had read other reviews stating that things took a turn for the worse around 70% through the book and as I went along, I thought, "what are these people talking about? This book is great!" and then I got to The Spot and I said "ah ha. Here we are. This is where it goes downhill".
The book is phenominally well written. The characters are amazing. Kate is a badass and we love to see Momma Bear badassery. But for the love of all that is holy, the Catholic doctrine being slammed down my throat was a bit much. I was transported right back to my childhood of CCD and Mary devotionals and rosary beads. The last 10% of the book was the worst, with the author straight out saying that we are all kept in our own personal hells by our own blindness and all we need to do to acheive salvation is open our eyes to the light of God. Blech blech blech. Listen, if that is your viewpoint, cool. You do you. But please, sir, keep your proselytizing out of my leisure time!!
This is getting four stars because I can't do half stars and the writing and the story were too good to give three. If the religious stuff was tampered down from a full boil to, say, a small simemr I would have given it 5.
The book is phenominally well written. The characters are amazing. Kate is a badass and we love to see Momma Bear badassery. But for the love of all that is holy, the Catholic doctrine being slammed down my throat was a bit much. I was transported right back to my childhood of CCD and Mary devotionals and rosary beads. The last 10% of the book was the worst, with the author straight out saying that we are all kept in our own personal hells by our own blindness and all we need to do to acheive salvation is open our eyes to the light of God. Blech blech blech. Listen, if that is your viewpoint, cool. You do you. But please, sir, keep your proselytizing out of my leisure time!!
This is getting four stars because I can't do half stars and the writing and the story were too good to give three. If the religious stuff was tampered down from a full boil to, say, a small simemr I would have given it 5.