This story started out strong, but quickly dwindled to very weak. There was such confusion about who was good, who was bad, etc. I caught on very quickly about the bad. There was such retread throughout the story. I love horror, but this was not that. ( )

Fantastic character development and interesting writing.

I enjoyed the typesetting (you know what I mean if you've read the book) and the intertwining of the character's stories.

That said, the last third of the book was over the top for me. I started to just skim the pages because the content didn't add anything to the plot, story, etc. It seemed as if it was thrilling just for the sake of thrilling, not for adding anything to the actual story.

I really enjoyed it until the last, say, third. Then it sort of fell into a weird well of thriller/fantasy that didn't seem to go with the rest of the book. ( )

Imaginary Friend is a hard book to review. I struggled even with deciding on how many stars to rate it. It's kind of a mess, in terms of pacing, plotting, and themes. Most of the characters are just archetypes. But the story and the imagery was so compelling I could not put it down or stay away for long. I kept coming back for more. I've been reading so much horror for so long that I'm not often moved or chilled, but there were many small moments in this book that felt somehow fresh and new and awful.

It really needed a heavier hand with the editing, though. Remember the complaints about the LotR movie The Return of the King had about 10 different endings - every time you thought the story resolved, it picked up and told a new ending? That's this book. At one point last night, I was yelling at the book in my best Monty Python voice, "Get on with it!" There was a lot of weird Christian allegory, but I'm not enough of a church-goer to parse it.

And yet. And yet, I still would recommend it.

Hardcover version, picked up on a whim at Half Price Books, when I set a goal for myself to pick a hardcover of an author I'm unfamiliar with from the Horror section, without reading reviews or anything other than the jacket blurb. ( )

I think this started off really strong, but it definitely lost me with Christopher “becoming god” and the whole god/devil/eve aspect of it. A lot could have been removed including all the Christian themes and characters - it just felt like a weak explanation for everything. ( )

DNF @ Page 128

Other books just seemed more interesting to read, and I got sucked into them instead. Then I read some reviews that said this book was "Christian fiction", and since I'm 100% anti-religion, that cemented my decision to add this to the DNF pile.