The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower satisfied me with its memorable and hilarious story. This is a story of a young 15 year old boy named Charlie, who struggles to grow up into the real world and discovering new ways to enjoy life.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, ultimately draws you into loving the characters and their perky personality and wild adventures. With Charlie surviving his freshman year of high school, he meets his two amazing friends and begins to take on different experiences that will change his life forever. As the end of this story comes to a closure, you begin to learn life lessons: understand sexuality, finding love, horrible habits, and coping with death in the family. With Charlie's confusion about his friend's sexuality, he finds himself caught in the curiosity of his own self identity. He becomes instantly in love and experiences feelings about a young girl for the first time. Charlie goes beneath his influences and finds himself doing drugs while starting a habit of smoking.

Chbosky writes this story at a first person view. The style of it becomes very teen-like, as if a young 15 year old boy was writing it. This helps young teenage adults to understand clearly without the struggles of understand much more of the book. He writes this book in a letter form; giving a visual impact that this is just a book of letters from one particular young man.

The characters: Charlie, Sam, and Patrick come out as very believable characters. I could very much compare myself to them. These characters are reflections of teenagers in this century. Full of curiosity and self freedom. Charlie is a very curios, Sam is wild, and Patrick is open. All together, they become "infinite".

The setting of the story is very dark. It consists of high school, a party house, his own home, and everywhere else in a small town. The setting gives the characters freedom to do anything they want.

This book reminds me of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. A novel that I have read years back. It reminded me of their love of music and the setting of it was very much alike. With Charlie being sexually abused by her aunt, it creates many connections with children around the world who are currently being forced into things that they are not comfortable with.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone. It is an amazing book to read because of it's hilarious scenes, dramatic plot, and awful moments. With this book being a movie, you should definitely read it first before ever deciding to watch the movie.