Dear Evan Hansen~ Val Emmich

I haven’t seen Dear Evan Hansen on stage and, whilst I know a few songs, I haven’t listened to the entire soundtrack. I’ve seen bits and pieces, including an amateur productions group performing Sincerely Me and You Will Be Found, but that’s as close to the seeing the musical as I have gotten. I do, however, know the basic storyline of the musical.

Here’s what I knew before picking up the book: A bad-boy type, Connor Murphy, commits suicide. A nobody kid, Evan Hansen, has Connor’s name on his cast and Connor’s parents assume they were friends. Evan plays into that and forges emails proving they were friends. Then something happens and Evan makes a speech that goes viral. And Evan may or may not start a relationship with the dead boy’s sister. 

My knowledge is a bit spotty, but I knew that this story was going to deal with mental health and suicide. I was expecting it to be a little hard to read because of those topics. That was not the case; the book was hard to read because it wasn’t that enjoyable.

On the first page of the first chapter, Evan Hansen introduces himself and lets everyone know that his name is actually Mike Evan Hansen and that his initials spell MEH. That’s how I felt about the entire book: meh.

It was a very strange novel to read. It didn’t quite feel like it was fleshed out enough to be a novel that was as long as it was. There was very little visual description of people and places. Finishing the book, I could tell you that Connor had long hair, Miguel was Mexican, Evan wore a cast and Zoe doodled on the cuffs of her jeans. The things that did have a decent amount of description were the things that would never change on stage, for example, a tie. My hopes going into this was the stage show with all the details that wouldn’t translate on stage. It wasn’t.

From what I expected, I was going to relate quite a bit to Evan Hansen, the loner who overthinks things. Then, very early on, Evan reveals he has anxiety, and I thought okay, maybe I’ll like him even more. No, Evan’s anxiety is all-consuming and it was too much. It was like the anxiety was the only thing the author’s managed to develop from the stage and they overdid it. Evan seems to have no characteristics other than anxious. It doesn’t help that Evan and all other living characters are horrible people. Across the board, they are all terrible people. Several times, I nearly gave up reading because there didn’t seem to be anybody doing something that wasn’t for selfish reasons. It was a lot to take in. 

Surprisingly, this book has a dual narrative, although it is Evan Hansen heavy. That second narrator was my favourite character and it was Connor, the dead kid. I didn’t quite understand why the second narrative was there, it seemed a bit odd to have a ghost speaking and reacting to the events of the plot without at any point getting involved, but they turned out to be my favourite chapters of the book. 

One of the few upsides in this book was the epilogue. Usually, to me, the epilogue always feels like an add-on the tie up a few loose ends. This epilogue, however, was one of the longest chapters in the book. It was the only chapter that began to redeem some of the characters and make them normal people again.

I in no way think that the musical will be of the same quality of the book and one day will hopefully, get around to seeing it. The book, however, was a big disappointment. I was going to give it one star, but the epilogue redeemed not only the characters but the book itself and pushed it up to two stars. Maybe I am not destined to like book versions of musicals. 

C🌙