Book Review : The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman

SPOILERS!! .... (well, duh)
For my birthday this month, I received a few books to add to my shelf (including the entire set of The Hunger Games - I had to brag about that in here somewhere). The Graveyard Book was one of them, and it was up high in my reading list as well. So, when I got it, I was thrilled. However, the result wasn't what I expected. 

The book takes you on a journey through Nobody Owens's life in a graveyard, where he is being brought up by the ghosts residing there. When he was just a baby, his entire family is killed by a man called Jack, and he was the only survivor. He had toddled up a hill and entered the graveyard, not knowing what had happened to his family, not knowing how much his life was about to change. 


Nobody Owens gets adopted by the ghosts in the graveyard, and he is brought up there, being educated by the dead scholars about old subjects. The book is about his life, and how he finds out that the ghosts aren't his family, that his real family was murdered, and that the killer is still alive.
Before I could reach the middle of the book, I had gotten unbelievably bored. 
It's interesting enough on the cover, the reviews on Amazon were amazing, there's a 4.1 rating on Goodreads, it's won awards and such - but it just wasn't capturing.
I normally feel very guilty if I buy a book and not finish it completely. However, I went about twenty-five pages in, and I put it down. I couldn't finish it. It just didn't pull me in and keep me hooked the way most Neil Gaiman books do. In my opinion, this was one of his worst, not his best. The language was plain and dull, the characters bland. The only character I liked was Silas, the caretaker, who was quite mysterious, and Elizabeth Hempstock, who was a ghost of a witch unjustly executed. Other than these two characters, no one else was interesting enough. 
I do not mean to be disrespectful towards Neil Gaiman, I have read many of his books, but I personally feel like The Graveyard Book was not up to his standard level.
Out of five, I would rate this book a one. 




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