I love this book! The illustrations really help set the mood. I have only read one other book about imaginary friends ([b:Crenshaw|23310699|Crenshaw|Katherine Applegate|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1475972698l/23310699._SX50_.jpg|42864821])... and even that book was really telling the boy's story through his relationship to the imaginary friend. But this book is the story of one particular imaginary friend, and the world of "imaginaries." It explores a lot of darker themes (death, loss, forgetting...) and has some pretty scary characters, so I wouldn't recommend it to anyone under 7 or so, unless they don't mind darker stuff.
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Spoilers ahead!
For those who've finished the book:

Where is the middle grade horror sequel about Rudger running from Simple Simon with the next "real" he befriends?

Or the prequel about how Mr. Bunting became the monster he is? Seriously, I need to know what happened to him and his imaginary before they, shall we say, joined the dark side.... (There is a hint at it on the back of the jacket of my edition: Mr. Bunting's shirt has a pattern which shows him and his imaginary holding hands. She is actually smiling at him, and has peach-toned skin and normal eyes. But he looks the same. However, all other illustrations inside the book of Mr. Bunting show his "Hawaiian" shirt and Bermuda shorts as covered in running (human) skeletons, fire, Hawaiian flowers with skulls for petals, and strange dragons trying to eat the skeletons.

I don't think anyone will see this, but I just wanted to put that out there. :) ( )

Intermediate. A creative girl has an imaginary friend, but there is a man who hunts imaginary friends and is after Amanda’s imaginary friend. It is a good book for kids to read and practice reading, sparks their imagination and is full of adventure and mystery.

I wanted so much to like The Imaginary; the cover is so enticing! But the description on the back of the book, which compares it to [b:Coraline|1967070|Coraline|Neil Gaiman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348347289s/1967070.jpg|21987573] and [b:The Witches|6327|The Witches|Roald Dahl|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1351707720s/6327.jpg|105046], is a more accurate reflection of the type of book it is than the cover. It's a creepy, spooky story interspersed throughout with illustrations -- some of which are downright scary. One Imaginary character is so similar to the scary girl from The Grudge movie, both in depiction and description, that I thought I would have nightmares. The illustrations are very reminiscent of [a:Edward Gorey|21578|Edward Gorey|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1200338278p2/21578.jpg]'s illustrations, simple-seeming sketches that still manage to be quite haunting.

While I wouldn't recommend The Imaginary to kids who scare easily, it is still a well-written and intriguing story. Fans of [a:John Bellairs|101070|John Bellairs|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1197854239p2/101070.jpg], [b:Coraline|1967070|Coraline|Neil Gaiman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348347289s/1967070.jpg|21987573], [a:Edward Gorey|21578|Edward Gorey|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1200338278p2/21578.jpg], and other spooky, scary books will enjoy it.

Note: I received an ARC from the publisher and a digital galley through NetGalley. ( )

Pardon me for a lot of repeating, this is basically a summarized version of my explanation to someone else during the reading process.

A girl has an imaginary friend she meets one day in her closet, they talk and her mom gets told about him and asks about him and her friends can't see him and he's being a bit Richie because he's all "It meant I was for Amanda only, and that felt nice, made me feel special", and then she meets a man who has his own imaginary friend. But before that we open with something that DOES interest me. Amanda "dies", he watches her die, and he feels empty and alone and feels like he's fading away and leaving existence, and I went OH this could be interesting, but then the plot twist says "I see you" and it goes and then I could see again instead of the darkness. Plotwist is there's a person who hunts imaginaries.

Now I'm twelve pages in, we have the synopsis on the book of the "then he finds out an imaginary hunter is after him" and we have the opening of Amanda dies, and a scary voice says I See You, and then we cut to before all of this.

And I'm slogging through this bumbling mess because it has a concept, but it's sort of you know what you're getting unless there's a surprise not yet spoiled because otherwise it's "read to find out what happens" but again, unless there's a twist, you know already, and the book's not massive, but it's really blandly written, the style is slow.

What interests me more than the book now is the concept of hey, if an imaginary friend's human dies, do they die, or do they exist so long as someone can see them? That was more interesting a thought than what I've read.

I can tell there's a hard attempt at "whimsy" because the names are goofy, not over the top but with last names like Shufflecup or whatever and a man who gets asked for his ID after saying his name twice gets a piece of cardboard, writes his name, holds it out, as in IDing himself. But it's very oatmeal feeling. These sentences are flat and just sort of go "and then something funny happened" and I go uh-huh, I know two things about you and five about the imaginary friend.

The cover here is what made me intrigued but we open on weird chapters and a lot of scenarios which I guess are cute but also eh. First thing is her shoes are soaking wet, the knots are tied too tightly, so she thinks what if she never gets them off, she'll have wet gross feet forever and she'll have to grow with deformed tiny feet as she grew up and she takes scissors and cuts the laces and opens the closet to hide them when "Roger" appears staring at her in confusion. (I call him Roger and not Rudger because Rudger constantly became Roger before my eyes, Rudger is hard to figure out the pronunciation, it's not like Bloo can be said like Blue or anything, it comes off as RUD-GRR, which is weird to behold.)

That was a weird mouthful to start with after Amanda was dead in front of Roger's eyes.

This is our main character. A child scared of wet shoes claiming her feet. It should appeal, right? It should be like oh kids are silly and do silly things like this, but it lacked the actual kid-ness of it and more OH YES A FIVE YEAR OLD IS CONTEMPLATING GETTING OLDER AND STUCK LIKE THIS AS AN ADULT. The kind of thing I did once or twice as a young child when I was in a serious situation not my shoes were too tight. But it's meant to be either serious or way too whimsical.

It's more it filled in all the blanks too fast.

Conflict: There is a hunter after Roger, Amanda loves Roger and won't let him go.
Intro: Amanda was dead.
Chapter two: Amanda is Amanda. . .
What's the stakes?
Intro: Amanda was dead, he watched her go blue and cease to move.
WHAT ARE THE STAKES?!

Reading through this book is both unpleasant, unhappy, and depressing. It's far too sad for a book, and I've no idea why it chose this route. ( )

Pardon me for a lot of repeating, this is basically a summarized version of my explanation to someone else during the reading process.

A girl has an imaginary friend she meets one day in her closet, they talk and her mom gets told about him and asks about him and her friends can't see him and he's being a bit Richie because he's all "It meant I was for Amanda only, and that felt nice, made me feel special", and then she meets a man who has his own imaginary friend. But before that we open with something that DOES interest me. Amanda "dies", he watches her die, and he feels empty and alone and feels like he's fading away and leaving existence, and I went OH this could be interesting, but then the plot twist says "I see you" and it goes and then I could see again instead of the darkness. Plotwist is there's a person who hunts imaginaries.

Now I'm twelve pages in, we have the synopsis on the book of the "then he finds out an imaginary hunter is after him" and we have the opening of Amanda dies, and a scary voice says I See You, and then we cut to before all of this.

And I'm slogging through this bumbling mess because it has a concept, but it's sort of you know what you're getting unless there's a surprise not yet spoiled because otherwise it's "read to find out what happens" but again, unless there's a twist, you know already, and the book's not massive, but it's really blandly written, the style is slow.

What interests me more than the book now is the concept of hey, if an imaginary friend's human dies, do they die, or do they exist so long as someone can see them? That was more interesting a thought than what I've read.

I can tell there's a hard attempt at "whimsy" because the names are goofy, not over the top but with last names like Shufflecup or whatever and a man who gets asked for his ID after saying his name twice gets a piece of cardboard, writes his name, holds it out, as in IDing himself. But it's very oatmeal feeling. These sentences are flat and just sort of go "and then something funny happened" and I go uh-huh, I know two things about you and five about the imaginary friend.

The cover here is what made me intrigued but we open on weird chapters and a lot of scenarios which I guess are cute but also eh. First thing is her shoes are soaking wet, the knots are tied too tightly, so she thinks what if she never gets them off, she'll have wet gross feet forever and she'll have to grow with deformed tiny feet as she grew up and she takes scissors and cuts the laces and opens the closet to hide them when "Roger" appears staring at her in confusion. (I call him Roger and not Rudger because Rudger constantly became Roger before my eyes, Rudger is hard to figure out the pronunciation, it's not like Bloo can be said like Blue or anything, it comes off as RUD-GRR, which is weird to behold.)

That was a weird mouthful to start with after Amanda was dead in front of Roger's eyes.

This is our main character. A child scared of wet shoes claiming her feet. It should appeal, right? It should be like oh kids are silly and do silly things like this, but it lacked the actual kid-ness of it and more OH YES A FIVE YEAR OLD IS CONTEMPLATING GETTING OLDER AND STUCK LIKE THIS AS AN ADULT. The kind of thing I did once or twice as a young child when I was in a serious situation not my shoes were too tight. But it's meant to be either serious or way too whimsical.

It's more it filled in all the blanks too fast.

Conflict: There is a hunter after Roger, Amanda loves Roger and won't let him go.
Intro: Amanda was dead.
Chapter two: Amanda is Amanda. . .
What's the stakes?
Intro: Amanda was dead, he watched her go blue and cease to move.
WHAT ARE THE STAKES?!

Reading through this book is both unpleasant, unhappy, and depressing. It's far too sad for a book, and I've no idea why it chose this route. ( )