Review: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

BOOK STATS

Rating: ☆☆☆
Title: The Graveyard Book
Author: Neil Gaiman
Genre: Paranormal
Audience: Middle Grade
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Neil Gaiman
Length: 8 hours (307 pages)
Publisher: HarperCollins; HarperAudio
Release Date: September 30, 2008
Source: Library (Libby)

SYNOPSIS

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.

But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod’s family.

A deliciously dark masterwork by bestselling author Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by award-winning Dave McKean.

MY THOUGHTS

Neil Gaiman is an author that I want to love, but his books have been hit or miss for me. Unfortunately, this book didn’t totally do it for me.

I love the creative and whimsical storytelling, the ghosts and the Jacks, but I just wanted more from this book. I think this is a great spooky choice for middle grade readers, but as an adult I was not fully absorbed in the story.