It's been a long time since a book has transported me so completely. Has taken me so deeply into myself that I become oblivious to the world around me and my head spins with disconnection when I try to regain awareness. Just me and the book, and nothing else. I started reading and was supposed to stop because life was still going on around me, but I didn't. I couldn't find my way back. So life moved on without me until I finished the book. Now I must figure out how to catch up, but that's okay. It was worth stopping at a special place for a while.
That's not entirely different than what Calvin experiences. Except it's not a book that takes him away from reality, it's schizophrenia. He wakes up one day to discover his mind has decided that Hobbes is real. That he is Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, now 17 years old, and entirely unable to control his reality. So he decides to make a grand gesture, the only thing he can imagine that might be a way out, to impress his "creator" Bill Watterson into remaking him as sane and normal. A crazy, desperate, dangerous gesture that only someone delusional would think reasonable. And he might--or might not--be responsible for dragging Susie along with him; because when you're delusional, it's hard to know who is real and who isn't. Either way, he will change his life forever or die trying. He, or they.
A fast read with adventure and relationships that is philosophical in all the best ways.
Reality is just this game people play together, something their brain decides on, and the minute their brain gets iffy about reality, they realize everything they know about the world is just their own made-up version of it, and that would mean everyone is walking around in their own made-up world, all alone, and reality is just something we invent together to make us feel not so alone. It scares people when some of us check out of the game.