4.04 AVERAGE

dark reflective tense medium-paced
dark sad tense medium-paced

This book was a little hard to get into for such a short book. The book is about unexplainable magic, kind of a dark fairy tail. This novel felt like a young adult novel with some adult themes thrown in, but we se it through a 7 year olds eyes, so most go over his head. I definitely had a Coralaine feel it.
lighthearted fast-paced

Like typical Gaiman fashion, this one was strange. He always seems to make me feel like I’m on a bad acid trip to start and as the story unravels I feel like it just gets worse but instead while I’m coming back to reality and seeing the mess I made while out of my mind. This one was short and hard hitting, you travel back to a time when you feared monsters and knew all the secret hiding spots. It’s captivating and off putting at the same time. I enjoyed the subtle themes of childhood fears and how they perfectly intertwine with those you face in adulthood as well. The brokenness and hopelessness conveyed in this story is not something I’d expect from a 178 page book. Gaiman delivers on cringe worthy imagery that makes the kid in you want to cry and tell your parents but the adult in you suspicious and nervous. Overall, I think the contradictions offered, mixed with the unbelievable weirdness of the story and the uncomfortably Gaiman seems to provoke, even bordering on distressing, makes this a great read. Personally, I think the writing is superb and I found the story to be unconventionally eerie overall but I don’t know if I’d give this a top favorite standing for the fact is quite unrelateable overall. There’s a lot of individual themes to glean from this, which are wonderfully subtle and interesting to see how profound they can really be when analyzed, but overall it’s hard to stay too attached for the simple fact of it being such a strange and unbelievable story on the surface level. It has the effect of telling you a tale and when you reflect on what you have been told you can see the layers pertaining to the realness conveyed beneath. Again, superb in that standing and it’s very thought provoking but I don’t know if it would be for everyone unless you’re willing to dig for what’s personal to you.

So. Good.
adventurous emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

This was such a strange book. Overall I really enjoyed it (especially since I listened to the audiobook,. narrated by Neil Gaiman himself) but I think this one was possibly on the cusp of a little too weird for me. I can't get the visual of that foot-worm out of my mind. XD
medium-paced
adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix