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Imaginary Friend cover art

Imaginary Friend

By: Stephen Chbosky
Narrated by: Christine Lakin
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Publisher's Summary

IMAGINE...
Leaving your house in the middle of the night.
Knowing your mother is doing her best, but she's just as scared as you.

IMAGINE...
Starting a new school, making friends.
Seeing how happy it makes your mother.
Hearing a voice, calling out to you.

IMAGINE...
Following the signs, into the woods.
Going missing for six days.
Remembering nothing about what happened.

IMAGINE...

Something that will change everything...

And having to save everyone you love.

©2019 Stephen Chbosky (P)2019 Orion Publishing Group

Critic Reviews

'Unputdownable ... You'll fall in love with these characters. That's why they stay with you, like a haunting.' R. J. PALACIO, author of WONDER

'An extraordinary book. The pages practically turn themselves.' GREER HENDRICKS & SARAH PEKKANEN, authors of THE WIFE BETWEEN US

'A fearsome, remarkably ambitious novel that breaks through the boundaries of the genre to become epic - in all the best senses of the word." LINCOLN CHILD, #1 New York Times bestseller

What listeners say about Imaginary Friend

Average Customer Ratings
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Wild with imagination

Really enjoyed this one, Christine did an awesome job of delivering an exciting story with good voices for all (her creepy grandma was great!)
The story was great, had vibes of IT happening with the kids building a tree house, and instead of dealing with a clown, do battle against 'the hissing lady' and a slew of minions (people with zip eyes, spider babies and kids with shadow hands just to name a few)
Had some really good concepts and the runtime was perfect to flesh out the story, but not drag on either.
Perfect amount of detail to draw up the spookometer without going too far into over description and the story took a few unexpecting turns along the way.
Down side I, guess would be that the kids seem to be older than their age, and at times felt like the mum had been lifted from stranger things, but that's pretty minor really.
A good thriller/horror if supernatural horror is your thing.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

far too long and repetitive

great reader. the book could have lost many chapters. too much repetition and the same themes repeated. nneeded more editing .

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Good fun story

A solidly written capturing story, the performance is brilliant as well, I highly recommend it!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Gloriously creepy

A wonderful, spooky roller coaster! I feel that the last third of the book drags a little bit but I enjoyed this so much! I don’t know if I would have enjoyed reading it as much as listening, but either way I am so glad I got to enjoy this story. I audibly gasped and had to turn lights on when listening at night when I first started listening, creepy and great!

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

interesting..but VERY long.

I enjoyed it for the first 15 hours..but then it just kept going...very long.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Amazing!!

Amazing story telling at its finest!
I found the the story will stay with you after every break you take! A story I will revisit and recommend.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Extremely imaginative, but a could have been shorter and parts felt too repetitive.

Truely loved reading this book. It was a wild ride and I never saw what was coming. The characters were fun, often loveable and had so much thought and depth into them. When the characters felt joy and dread, I felt like I was experiencing that joy and dread with them.

However, the story did drag a bit as it neared its climax. There were definitely parts that could have been written more concisely or taken out entirely. I was initially feeling genuine dread through the beginning and middle of the story. But that fear dropped significantly during the third act of the story due to how dragged out it felt.

Another thing that annoyed me was how repetitive the writing was. Most of the time, the repetition worked really well, but other time it was just annoying and often very unnecessary. For example, Christopher’s mother, Kate Reese, was constantly referred to as “Christopher’s mother” and their were only a few moments where she was referred to by her name. This may be a small example of this repetitive style of writing, and at the beginning it was rather endearing as it mimics the way children often refer to their friends parents. But the more you read “Christopher’s mother” in nearly every paragraph, it gets annoying very quickly.

Other than that, this is a worth while read, bursting at the seams with vivid imagination and sprinkled in with moments with genuine heart as well as horrifying moments.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

17 hours of my life I'm never getting back

narrator brilliant story repetitive 5 hours too long only finished it because of narrator, boring

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Way too long

Could have been 10 hours shorter. Felt like I was trapped in Groundhog Day. Stick with Stephen King

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

WTF?

This story started out promising but soon descended rapidly into a disturbing melange of gratuitous violence, long-winded metaphors with suspicious and poorly constructed religious undertones. 50 chapters too long.

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