Book Review: Coraline – Neil Gaiman

Rating: 5/5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Genre: Dark Fantasy, Middle-Grade

Review:

Yes, I finally read Coraline! And I loved it. Super lazy Sunday with a gray wintry weather—perfect day for a spooky story. So I decided it was high time I read Coraline, the story of a little girl who found a locked door with a bricked wall behind it, a door that led to nowhere, in the new flat she and her parents had moved in. Actually, the door led somewhere which she found out much to her misfortune.

Neil Gaiman’s writing was excellent, a smooth flow of words that was beautiful, a pleasure to read. Coraline was a bright child with a questing mind. I felt bad for her when she was ignored by her parents, who didn’t listen to her at times. It wasn’t any surprise when she found a door to another world during her explorations and went through.

But I loved how despite being ignored by her parents, she still she loved them so much, how despite being afraid she strove to do the right thing. She was an extraordinary child, at times so sweet, I wanted to hug her.

The plot-line was splendid, spooky, an epic tale of darkness and bravery. I read this book in one sitting and absolutely loved it.

Blurb: The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring…. In Coraline’s family’s new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close. The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own. Only it’s different. At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there’s another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go. Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.