Penpal

Penpal is a 2012 self-published horror thriller novel based on the creepypasta of the same name written by Dathan Auerbach.

Plot
What starts out as a harmless penpal exercise in class soon turns into a long-running nightmare for a young boy being obsessively stalked by an unknown assailant over the course of many years.

Why it Rocks

 * 1) Once again, the novel defies pretty much every creepypasta stereotype that's flooded the market and does something highly original and compelling instead. The author clearly put a lot of time and effort into the story as a whole with tons of detail and originality that makes it hard to believe it was once a creepypasta.
 * 2) It's much longer than pretty much any other creepypasta and uses that time very wisely to really build up the tension for a very long time and the horror of the narrator's experiences throughout the years.
 * 3) An absolutely terrifying atmosphere throughout as we become more aware as to the extent where the Narrator is being stalked and the more sinister aspects of Penpal's character, and it becomes even more terrifying as we go through plenty of parts of his life and how he's becoming more aware of both as he grows older. It constantly has readers getting the feeling of always looking over their shoulder due to the possibility that this can happen to anyone.
 * 4) It takes an interesting look at childhood, how the Narrator doesn't see the significance of these events as a child but laments as an adult that they're what made his life an absolute nightmare because of that, like how he sends a dollar labeled "for stamps" to his anonymous penpal only to be given that very same dollar later when he's running a lemonade stand.
 * 5) Very intricate writing style that avoids being overly detailed, but also bringing a lot of great visual narration into each scene. It's also never boring at any point as the tension constantly escalates as the chapter goes on before reaching a climax.
 * 6) We get plenty of points in the Narrator's life and random little events that become major story points later on, like his first pet, his first date, and so on. This makes him feel very much like a real character and a highly sympathetic one at that as opposed to a lot of cliche creepypasta characters and makes his situation all the more disturbing.
 * 7) Plenty of disturbing moments where the Narrator finds evidence of the Penpal stalking him, like hearing clicking noises he soon learns come from a camera and finding evidence of someone living under his crawlspace in his old house when looking for his missing cat.
 * 8) Plenty of equally disturbing plot twists, where the Narrator has been conversing with somebody who's been dead for a long time without even knowing it, showing how much the Penpal has affected him mentally even if he's never been in physical danger.
 * 9) We never meet Penpal in person, which only serves to make him more disturbing. Nevertheless, he's given plenty of character through the Narrator's observations, which can be unreliable, making him both scary and enigmatic.
 * 10) There's almost no violence in the book, a nice contradiction from most Creepypastas, but the violence that does happen, while not graphic, is genuinely disturbing and heartbreaking as opposed to being just gory.
 * 11) A mind-blowing plot twist where it's revealed that the Narrator's mother unknowingly met Penpal, and the father of the victim unknowingly hired him to fill holes, and Penpal ended up burying the victim alive along with an adult man. Whether that body was Penpal or not is never explained, but the thought that it might not have been makes it more horrifying, especially how the father unknowingly staged his son's death.
 * 12) A disturbing ending where it's left unknown if Penpal will ever face justice for his crimes as he doesn't believe in an afterlife, and how he feels such immense guilt for the death of his friends and others, feeling they would've survived if they never met, but also cherishing the moments they spent.
 * 13) It deals with a lot of disturbing themes like trauma, fear of the unknown, nightmares caused by reality, and the loss of a friend as well as survivor's guilt.
 * 14) The book isn't horribly long and can be finished pretty quickly.