The perks of being a wallflower: I swear I was infinite

For the first time this year, I read a book I really like, and I finished it in just 5 days. Borrowing Charlie's words, it's the kind of book that takes you places. It's exactly the effect The Perks of Being A Wallflower has on me.

I know it's late to read the book just now, when the book was written and published many years ago. But I didn't know it existed until the movie came out last year. Haha. So ashamed of my self. I called myself a geek and a book worm, yet I've very little knowledge about it. 

The Perks of Being a wallflower, is written in simple, day-to-day words, makes it readable to everyone, even those with limited English. and again, since it's in a format of letters, the dates are really important. The main character is Charlie (a pseudo name), a 16 year old boy who's not popular at all in school. He's the kind of boy who you'll see sitting alone during lunch, or who stays quiet in class. Initially, Charlie didn't have that many people he can call friends at school. But he's very attentive to his surrounding. Then one day in a football game, he somehow took the initiative to greet a senior whom he knows from his shop class, and his life just changed from then on. Patrick is the name of the senior who later became Charlie's best friend. Together with Sam, Patrick's step sister, Patrick and Sam slowly brought Charlie out of his shell. Patrick told Charlie to participate more in life, which Charlie did. 

It's a coming-of-age story. Story about Charlie, and how he deals with life, the sudden death of a friend, how he experienced first love through Sam, first prom, first date, first kiss, and so on and on. How he transformed little by little from a wallflower to a normal kid, who still have to deal with a certain mental illness Charlie himself failed to comprehend. 

To close this review, there's this one paragraph I'd like to cite, which come from the last part of the book. 

"...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."