Dear Evan Hansen by Val Emmich
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Reviewed by Mikaela S., 12th Grade
Rating: 5/10
This book is about a character named Evan Hansen, who is attracted to a girl name Zoe Murphy. Zoe had an older brother named Conner, who very sadly ended his life. Connor had been struggling with mental illnesses and had been fighting with his parents and the people around him for awhile. Evan took the mourning of Connor's death as an opportunity to get closer to Zoe. He claimed that he knew Connor and made fake messages between them to "prove" it. The whole point of him doing this was to try and date Zoe.
Overall I did not really enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. I didn't like the plot in this story and I thought it was honestly quite immature and cruel of Evan to do what he did. He manipulated the people around him into believing that he and Connor were good friends just to get with a girl. This already made the book not as enjoyable for me. There wasn't really any character development from Evan and it just made him more unlikable. While I do not like Evan and what he did, Connor did have some development by the end of the book and the story did great with showing the journey through mental illness and depression. It showed what it is like to be mentally ill and the effect that it can take on someone and even the people around them because of their suffering.
This book was not necessarily bad but there are definitely some things that I hoped to see while reading it but didn't. I think that this book is worth the read if you are interested in the overall message of the story and especially if you are interested in the musical/movie that was made for it, the book goes into greater detail.
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