The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky
Rating: 2/5

What do I think? Well I'll tell you. I was way to excited to read this book just to find out it's crap. The only reason I gave it two stars is because I think the story had potential to be good and I liked the idea, but it was just bad. There were times when I wanted to like Charlie, I really did, but then he started crying. Where to begin... Well first of all for a fifteen year old boy who is supposedly a good reader and wants to write for a profession, he can't write at all. I've never seen so m...more What do I think? Well I'll tell you. I was way too excited to read this book just to find out it's crap. The only reason I gave it two stars is because I think the story had potential to be good and I liked the idea, but it was just bad. There were times when I wanted to like Charlie, I really did, but then he started crying. Where to begin... Well first of all for a fifteen year old boy who is supposedly a good reader and wants to write for a profession, he can't write at all. I've never seen so many repetitive and incomplete sentences in my life! I know he has issues or whatever but the crying was killing me. For a teenager, even an overly emotional one, he cried an awful lot about absolutely nothing. I swear almost every paragraph described how he was sad or crying or how someone else was sad or crying. I just don't think Chbosky did a good job portraying a boy at that age no matter what his problems were. I already touched on how the writing "style" if you will was repetitive and crappy but let me add that it was also inaccurate. This story was of a teenage boy in 1991 and yet the author keeps writing about playing records. I know people still have them and use them but they started to not be popular in the 1980's and CD's were more mainstream. I also recognize that many people like to collect them and some bands put out new ones just for the sake of keeping it alive but what high school kid in '91 plays vinyl and makes mixed tapes still? I certainly didn't. Then he kept writing about the "neighborhood" and his parents like they were out of an old sitcom or something and I had to keep reminding myself that his mom doesn't walk around the house in an apron with perfect hair and they live in a modern world not too far off from our current day, aside from political views. It was just dumb. Like I said, I wanted to like it but the author turned it into crap. It had potential but does that really count in the end? I barely made it through the whole book and almost ditched it several times. Honestly, I only finished it because I paid for it. So if you like crap, read this book! L-