Dear Evan Hansen

I may very well be the last person on earth who hasn't yet seen the mega-popular play by the same name. But I'm going to be honest - while people rave about the play, this novelization was just okay for me. 

I started this book with no idea about its plot, only its hype on stage. I appreciated how this teen-focused story deals with a few important issues facing teens - anxiety, bullying, suicide - but I couldn't connect with the story or Evan and my general feelings about the book fell in the 'meh' end of the spectrum. 

My biggest beef is that the story, secondary characters and Evan are all bland and underdeveloped. Evan is supposed to be a 17-year-old teen but behaves and speaks like a 12-year-old and his entire personality is centred around his anxiety. When you add in the horrible lies he tells to a grieving family, he's just not the main character I expected.

I'm sad to say the story never grabbed my attention and moved too slow for my tastes. While I'm not in the target teen audience, I appreciated the topics it addressed (and I enjoyed the levity Jared's texts gave the story) but the book didn't have the impact I had anticipated. Even though this book was a miss for me, I still hope to see the musical to see what all the fuss is about.

My Rating: 2.5 stars

Book Details

Author: Val Emmich

Genre: Teen Fiction

Type: Hardcover (368 pages)

Source: Local Public Library

Publisher: Poppy

First Published: October 9, 2018

Book Description from GoodReads: From the show's creators comes the ground-breaking novel inspired by the Broadway smash hit Dear Evan Hansen.

Dear Evan Hansen,

Today's going to be an amazing day and here's why...

When a letter that was never meant to be seen by anyone draws high school senior Evan Hansen into a family's grief over the loss of their son, he is given the chance of a lifetime: to belong. He just has to stick to a lie he never meant to tell, that the notoriously troubled Connor Murphy was his secret best friend.

Suddenly, Evan isn't invisible anymore--even to the girl of his dreams. And Connor Murphy's parents, with their beautiful home on the other side of town, have taken him in like he was their own, desperate to know more about their enigmatic son from his closest friend. As Evan gets pulled deeper into their swirl of anger, regret, and confusion, he knows that what he's doing can't be right, but if he's helping people, how wrong can it be?

No longer tangled in his once-incapacitating anxiety, this new Evan has a purpose. And a website. He's confident. He's a viral phenomenon. Every day is amazing. Until everything is in danger of unraveling and he comes face to face with his greatest obstacle: himself.

A simple lie leads to complicated truths in this big-hearted coming-of-age story of grief, authenticity and the struggle to belong in an age of instant connectivity and profound isolation.