Dear Evan Hansen

I got an ARC of this with some skepticism, mostly because like...is a YA novelization of a musical really necessary? I totally get the behind the scenes/making of type of book for musicals–I definitely remember poring over my copy of the Rent book before I was able to see the show live.

ANYWAY. I haven't seen Dear Evan Hansen but I have listened to the cast recording and generally like it, and I read the Wikipedia summary because just from listening to the recording I was like “oh wait what's happening?!”

So I started reading this and felt a little cringey, but in a way that seems fairly authentic to its social anxiety-ridden narrator, Evan.

And then things started happening from the POV of Ghost Connor and I was like WTF??? Is...is Ghost Connor in the musical??? I started asking a friend who has actually seen the show and she was like.......no. I described what all was happening in the book and she said it sounded like the book was trying to address criticism of the musical, namely that nobody actually knows anything about Connor. Except that it's kind of the point that nobody knows anything about Connor, so to set him up as this sympathetic queer ghost who killed himself because his kinda-boyfriend didn't text him back, which it turns out his kinda-boyfriend was just DOING YARDWORK AND DIDN'T HAVE HIS PHONE..........anyway it's a lot????? I think it's also trying really hard to expand on Evan's POV about why he does the objectively shitty things he does, which...again I feel like the information we get from the musical itself is probably enough? You get the sense of how he's swept along with what's happening...I don't think we need a whole bunch more inner turmoil TBH.

IDK, this is fine. Teen fans of DEH are going to be hype for it. I'm not sure it stands on its own as a novel for readers who don't care about the musical?