The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a young adult, coming of age story that explores the challenges of being a young teenager through the eyes of a guy named Charlie. While I’m not in the target audience for the novel, I did admire that it tackled some tough issues, including mental health, homosexuality, drug and alcohol use, and sexual abuse.

I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower as part of the 2025 Thoughtful Reading Challenge. July’s challenge was to read an epistolary novel (one that is told mostly through letters, journals, and other forms of written communication) because July 1st was National Postal Worker Day. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is told exclusively through Charlie’s letters to an unidentified friend.

As usual, I’ll begin with a quick summary of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Charlie begins his freshman year in high school when the story begins. He is extremely anxious about it, and he writes letters to a “friend” as a coping mechanism. (The novel takes place in the early 1990s when writing letters was still a thing.) As the story unfolds, we learn that anxiety is just one aspect of Charlie’s broader mental health issues.

Charlie lives with his parents and older sister, and his older brother is away at college, playing football for Penn State. Things with his current home life seem good, although he has typical sibling spats with his sister.

On the friend front, Charlie’s two best friends are seniors. Patrick is clever and gay, and Sam (a girl) is pretty, and Charlie has a huge crush on her. Unfortunately, she’s dating a football star, who’s a player in more than one way.

Here are some of the activities the friends do together:

• Act out The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Make mix tapes for each other
• Play truth or dare
• Indulge in underage drinking
• Share cigarettes

That all seems pretty typical, but there are also more extreme behaviors. For example, drug use, and Charlie accompanies Patrick to a place where Patrick can have anonymous gay sex.

In addition to these gritty topics, The Perks of Being a Wallflower also touches on:

• Child molestation
• Physical abuse: A boyfriend hits Charlie’s sister. And she continues to see him despite her parents’ instructions.
• Abortion: Charlie accompanies his sister when she has an abortion.
• Rape: Charlie believes he witnesses a rape when a boy seemingly forces a girl to give him a blow job.

I don’t know about you, but my high school experience was nothing like this.

There’s a lot going in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and it’s told from the perspective of a 13-year-old boy, so parts of it are rather crass. Kudos to the author for trying to highlight and demonstrate how ill-equipped young teens are at handling some very serious issues they encounter as they’re growing up, if, in fact, that’s what he was trying to do. Unfortunately, he created an R-rated young adult novel that I don’t think is suitable for young teens.

If you have read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I would love to hear your opinion.

And if you read an epistolary novel in July, please tell us all about it.

**Reminder – August’s challenge is to read a political thriller. This should be fun!