Have you ever thought to yourself, "I'm so lucky that this person came into my life," and if you had been in a different place at a different time, you wouldn't have met, and how unsettling that feels? That's how I feel about The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I am very glad that I happened to be in the library and that I randomly found this book out of all the other books in there. It is a book that reaches to your soul and makes you feel.

The book is about a young teenage boy called Charlie and is in letter format. Who does he write these letters to? We don't really know. They always start with "Dear friend," and always end with "Love always, Charlie." Once I got into the book I found that I ignored the letter format and it read like a regular 1st-person story.

The character of Charlie is a very interesting and likable character. He is honest, blunt, emotional, and deeply caring of others. From the start it seems that Charlie has a unique way of thinking and acting, and you may spend a lot of time trying to work out what's "wrong" with him. Does he have some kind of mental illness? After a while I realised that I related to Charlie a lot more than I thought, and that we all probably relate to Charlie in some way or another. Sometimes we can feel alone in how we think, and we keep things to ourselves because we don't believe that anyone else thinks that way. We don't want to be seen as a freak. Charlie doesn't seem to have the "shame" gene though, and at times he openly expresses his views much to the surprise of others.

The book is wonderfully written and I am impressed with Chbosky's style. Usually I am not a fan of short, quick sentences but it really worked in this book as it conveyed Charlie's blunt nature perfectly. Among the beautifully written words there is a storyline bubbling under the surface, which is both disturbing and sad. The revelation at the end shocked me, personally, as I didn't see it coming. Now that I look back, there were probably a few clues.

I don't believe that the blurb does this book justice. It makes it sound like your average book about growing up, but it is so much more than that.

"I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad."