Evan Hansen, a teen crippled by anxiety, starts each day by writing a letter of encouragement to himself. When loner Connor Murphy finds one of the letters at school and dies by suicide days later, his parents deliver the "Dear Evan Hansen" to Evan, who lies about being Connor's best friend. As the Murphys embrace Evan, his lie goes viral, giving comfort to the grieving family and making him a social media darling. But as the lies build, Evan's guilt forces him to admit the truth. In this stage-to-page adaptation, characters' back stories offer depth only hinted at by the Tony Award winning musical. Connor's posthumous narration offers insights into his mental state, while Evan's voice and interior monologues reveal the intensity of his own. The ending eases some of the rockiness of Evan's life, and while there are no overt consequences for his deception, he is seemingly left to ponder his actions. Readers who long for acceptance will welcome this opportunity to experience Evan's story.

Emmich (The Reminders, 2017) joins the team behind the Tony-winning musical to create this novel adaptation.Awkward high school senior Evan Hansen has zero friends and a debilitating mixture of depression and anxiety. As a coping mechanism, his therapist assigns him to write letters to himself to reframe his thinking. When one of those letters is found on the body of Connor Murphy, a loner classmate and brother of Evan's crush, Zoe, the Murphys assume that Connor addressed a suicide note to Evan and that the boys were secretly friends. Evan does nothing to dissuade this notion, and soon his lies build as he experiences belonging and acceptance for the first time. But as his anxiety winds ever tighter and others notice loopholes in his story, Evan begins to unravel as he fears exposure. Evan's first-person narration is simultaneously sympathetic and frustrating, female characters feel underdeveloped, and the story's representation of mental health issues is at times underwhelming. Inserted interludes of Connor's ghostly first-person, post-death perspective provide marginal insight into his character, although it is here that readers learn of Connor's fluid sexuality. Whether or not they've seen or listened to the musical, many readers will latch on to the story's message that "no one deserves to be forgotten." Evan presents as white, and other major characters are African-American and Latinx.Without the rich music and stage performance it's a middling story with themes better handled elsewhere; impeccably timed for the musical's national tour, however, teens will clamor to read it. (Fiction. 14-18)

Gr 9 Up-A novelization of the Tony award-winning Broadway musical of the same name. Evan Hansen, deeply lonely, anxious, and invisible to his peers, finds himself accidentally associated with the suicide of a classmate. The web of lies and truths and growth that comes from the original mistake changes Evan's life and many lives around his. Emmich, in collaboration with the playwright and song-writing team of the original musical, has pulled off a very successful translation from stage to page, helped by the fact that the core themes are classic YA materialheartfelt, morally ambiguous without being morally impossible, and tuning into the small connections and discoveries between teens. VERDICT An unpredictable and endearing take on some classic themes, this novel will especially appeal to fans of the show but will also be easily accessible to new audiences. Katya Schapiro, Brooklyn Public Library