From the Bookshelf of 2025 Reading Challenge…

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Stephen Chbosky

Start date: August 1, 2025

Finish date: August 31, 2025

Discussion: October 2025 Group Read

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October 2025 Group Read

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last updated Oct 23, 2025 01:40PM

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What Members Thought

Mar 01, 2024 Sabrina rated it really liked it

Shelves: coming-of-age, classics, literary-fiction, contemporary-fiction, epistolary-novel, family-relationships, 52in52weeks2024, literary-classic, pbt-steeplechase

Going into this novel, I felt like The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of those books that everyone has read, but I somehow missed it. So, I finally got around to reading the book that a physical copy of has set on various shelves for more than a few years now.

I didn't really go into Chbosky's Perks with any preconceived notions about what the book was about because despite it being made into a major motion picture, I somehow missed all the hype for the movie and the trailers for it as well. Going into this novel, I felt like The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of those books that everyone has read, but I somehow missed it. So, I finally got around to reading the book that a physical copy of has set on various shelves for more than a few years now.

I didn't really go into Chbosky's Perks with any preconceived notions about what the book was about because despite it being made into a major motion picture, I somehow missed all the hype for the movie and the trailers for it as well. Thus, I didn't know much about it other than it was regaled as a wonderful coming of age story that was masterfully written. I also didn't know before I started reading that it was an epistolary novel but with a slight twist in that there was only one character--Charlie--who was doing the letter writing.

Once I began reading, I didn't think that I would enjoy the novel as much as I did end up enjoying it, simply because I found Charlie and a few of the other characters annoying including his parents and his siblings, but as the novel progressed, I found myself enjoying the text more and more. I think the book started to shift for me when you could see, as a reader, Charlie's writing maturing through his letters because not only was his voice as a writer improving but his actual writing in the letters was getting stronger as well.

I was a little surprised at finding out what happened to Charlie. I did feel, throughout the novel that something not so great had happened, but the twist of what actually happened to him that essentially manifested in panic attacks and self-destructive behavior as a coping mechanism was a bit of a surprise. (Or maybe this is something that I should have been more cognizant of had I read anything about the novel itself or the movie before reading the novel.

I will say that I do fully understand why people rave about The Perks of Being a Wallflower because much of the writing that allows us to see Charlies' growth through his letter writing is really superb. I do think that a few things kept this from being a 5 star read for me, including that some parts simply felt rushed, and I found myself wanting to know more about what happens to Charlie as he continues on through high school but also wanting to know what happens to some of the other main characters, including Sam and Patrick and Mary Ellen after they leave for college and Charlie is still in high school. I also found myself wanting to know more about Charlie's English teacher and why he chose most of the books he asked Charlie to read other than they were all, in some ways, deemed great works of their time and many were coming of age stories themselves.

Finally, part of me really wanted to know who he was actually writing the letters to (if he was writing to anyone). [I toyed with the idea that he might have been writing to Michael, but then I just don't know, which I think is one of the things that bothered me the most in terms of things not being tied up.] But then again, perhaps knowing who Charlie was really writing to may have tied things up too neatly, and part of (but not all) of the point of the novel seems to be how messy relationships really are, whether those are familial relationships, friendships, or romantic relationships.

4 solid stars.
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Jan 28, 2020 Eileen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020genrechallenge, 2020-ng-group-challenge, 2020, contemporary, teen-young-adult

This story started out as a 3 for me but ended up close to a 5, so I'm giving it a 4. I think if I were to listen again, I might go higher. But it took me some time to figure out who everyone was and why Charlie was even writing these letters and my attention definitely wandered near the beginning. But then something happened midway and I became riveted to the story and I wanted to know that Charlie was going to be okay. Looking back, there were foreshadowing elements about how it would end, but ...more

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