Book Review - The Imaginary by A.F Harrold, Illustrated by Emily Gravett

The premise of this book revolves around a girl named Amanda and her imaginary friend Rudger. They play together in Amanda's back garden which is a den for adventures of all varieties. Nobody other than Amanda can see Rudger and nobody else believes he even exists. Amanda and Rudger live very happily together until Mr Bunting knocks on their front door.

Mr Bunting is a mysterious man with his own imginary friend (which is rather strange for adults as they are supposed to forget this sort of thing as they get older). We find out rather quickly just how evil Mr Bunting really is. He eats imaginary friends and he is after Rudger.

I really enjoyed this story which shows in that I read it in one night.

Highlights

• The power cut - This scene gave me chills with Amanda's eerie game of hide and seek. Mr Bunting's imaginary friend was a very creepy character with her long dark hair, pale face and soulless dark eyes. The part where she only appeared when the lightening flashed was so scary!
• The talking cat = awesome
• The library filled with imaginary friends which included gnomes, ragdolls, dinosaurs and teddy bears.

The characters were wonderful in this story. Amanda was a little selfish at times which didn't put Rudger in the best situations when she refused to listen to his warnings about Mr Bunting. Rudger on the other hands was very brave and was able to escape from some pretty scary situations with a little help from an imaginary girl named Emily and a talking cat with two different coloured eyes.

It had heartbreak, adventure and humour.

This book reminded me of a Tim Burton film and Neil Gaiman's book Coraline, which I also love.

I gave this book 5/5 stars.