Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

So, on the real, PENPAL low key blew my mind. It was a recommended book from a coworker a couple months ago, and honestly I didn't know that much about the book before going into it. I had known this book was originally a post on 'creepypasta' (reddit), and thanks to a gofundme it was published. I also knew this book wasn't easy to describe, and now that I'm trying to do just that, I truly see how difficult the task is. The major theme of this book is how our innocence as children protects us (more specifically our memories) from how dark and disturbing our pasts may have really been. The story is told from the author's (Dathan Auerbach) point of view, recalling memories from when he was a young boy. We are given each piece in a non-chronological order, a detail I liked a lot. This book - on several different occasions - made my skin crawl. I'm not easily spooked, but while reading parts of this book, certain realizations were sinking in as they were occurring (realizations to the reader, not to the subject) and when you begin to realize things Dathan doesn't (by reading the book as an adult, where narration is told by a child) you'll begin to feel your heart sink in your chest. This feeling is especially true if you had a similar childhood to the narrator, such as, being middle class, living in a suburb, and spending most of your childhood outside playing in the woods/area surrounding your house. (*raises hand*) PENPAL got pretty good ratings on Amazon (4.5 stars) and did slightly less well on Goodreads (3.88 stars). I will say that I did not read any reviews before picking up the book because I trusted my coworker on his suggestion and the book was so cheap (Kindle version is $4.99!) It wasn't until I planned on writing a review for this that I took a look at what people had to say about the book. One of the biggest problems readers had with Penpal was the quality of Auerbach's writing. Which, I will also admit, it's not stellar. I do agree with others that it reads like a reddit post cut into chapters. With that being said though, I actually liked that the book was written this way. It might be because the book feels more realistic, like someone having a conversation with you, as opposed to a book being narrated by a third party. Also, while others called this 'rambling' (Auerbach's sentence and paragraph style) I thought it added to the effect of a man recalling memories. When a person is remembering something - like their creepy, hair raising childhood - it doesn't come out in a perfect chronological order. In fact, I'm very happy with the way the book was written. [...]