REVIEW: THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman

Title: The Graveyard Book

Author: Neil Gaiman

Series: -

Genres: Fantasy, Children's, Paranormal, Horror, YA

Publisher: HarperCollins

Release: September 30th, 2008

Source: Kindle

Pages: 312
 

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BLURB:
After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own.

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family...

Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic Coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, The Graveyard Book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.

EXPECTATIONS: All I knew about the book was that Hannah liked it a lot, so I trusted her opinion when going into this. I also enjoyed Coraline a lot so I kind of had big expectations for it. And I was not disappointing!

THE WORLD: The world is very unique in this one. We have the normal mortal world and then we are presented and we move to the world of the dead. And it's not all dark, and gloomy, wet and cold and dirt and pain. In fact, this book shows that after you die you get keep on living and sometimes it's even more adventurous then the mortal life. I enjoyed the world Gaiman created in this book it was fun, it was well made and developed and even though it was in a cemetery, it felt like home.

CHARACTERS: Our main character is called Nobody (Bod) Owens. However, that is not his birth name. So the story is very simple: when Bod was a toddler, a man - Jack, killed his entire family. Bod escaped because he crawled out of his crib and crawled to the graveyard on the hill. There he was taken into care by ghosts who lived there and that is how he got the name and a new family. I liked Bod a lot. He was just as any other kid - curious! I felt like I was one of the ghosts in the story, because we get to see Bod grow up from a toddler to a young man, so I had this connection with him - he was my baby too! 

The book contains some excellent characters I am not even kidding you guys! The characters in this one are pure gold! We have Bod's foster parents, Mr. and Mrs. Owens, who reminded me a lot of the Ron Weasley's parents. We have a bad-turned-to-good vampire Silas, who is the caretaker of the cemetery  and sort of a mentor for Bod. We have Ms. Lupescu and many many other wonderful characters!

We also get to meet some living people in the book. Bod's friend Scarlett, her parents, some kids when Bod tries to go to a normal school and so one. We also have a villain, the man Jack, who killed Nobody's parents.

ROMANCE: Bod and Scarlett have this first crush - what to do vibe for me, but the book does not concentrate on love or romantic feelings.

GOOD: The concept is very unique I think. I enjoyed the humor of this book so much it hurts. I liked the lullabies Mrs. Owens sang for Bod. Just in general this book was so well though-through that it's astonishing.

BAD: However, it did get slow at times I will confess. I felt like some things could have been left out and the story could have been shorter.

OVERALL: I personally loved this book more than Coraline. I like Coraline very much as well, but this one just was closer to my heart I think! And I am very disappointed in myself that it took me this long to read such beautiful books! I know it's Children's literature, but believe me, I will be going back to this for years to come!

What do you think about THE GRAVEYARD BOOK?