Reading through 2014 : The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I have just turned the last page of this book and still feel a bit confused on my actual feeling on it.
My husband (geez, it does still feel really weird to call R. my husband!) gave me this book on Christmas, since it'd been on my amazon wishlist for quite a long time. I was all happy receiving it and spent the first week of 2014 reading it... Yes, it took me a whole week to read it, in spite of it being 231 pages only. This last statement suffices to say that the book didn't win my heart, to my big disappointment. Disappointment is even worse when you'd been looking forward to reading a story you'd thought of as a masterpiece. Anyway...

The back cover of my book (of which you see a photo at the beginning of this post) says:
"Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught in between trying to live his life and trying to run from it.
Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mix tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But he can't stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor."

My opinion on the book isn't as enthusiastic as the one written on the cover of my own copy of it, where it's called "a deeply affecting coming-of-age story". I wouldn't really define it affecting, let alone deeply. In spite of it being written in an epistolary form, where letters are sent to an imaginary friend (with whom the reader is supposed to personify) there's nothing in the style of Charlie's letters that brings the reader to really feel some empathy for him. The character of Charlie is just weird, but never become a rounded character, in my opinion. The boy thinks a lot and writes about his thoughts and feelings in the letters to this imaginary friend, but it doesn't go deeper than that. When I first read the synopsis of this book I immediately put it on my wishlist because I was as unpopular in school as Charlie is. But apart for that one thing I couldn't really relate to Charlie. And I am sorry I couldn't feel anything for him. Toward the end though the book gets a bit better. There's a twist at the very end of the story and after that Charlie's character becomes a bit more real. But it is only the epilogue of the whole book, so too little to really improve the whole reading.

Favourite quote from the book: "[...] I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them."

I do still recommend this book to anyone who likes epistolary prose. And I am actually pretty sure that a good friend of mine would love to read Chbosky's novel. I'll not fail to recommend this reading to her.