Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Genre: Fantasy
Edition/Pages: Audiobook, 5 hours 49 min
Goodreads page

Synopsis

A middle aged man returns to his home town for a funeral. While there, he stops at the place where his childhood home once was and finds himself visiting the farm at the bottom of the lane. While sitting at pond behind the old farm house memories from his childhood start flooding back – magical, dark memories about a girl named Lettie Hempstock who used to live at the farm with her mother and grandmother.

My Review

This book is dark, magical, and strange. And I loved it.

The audiobook is narrated by the author, Neil Gaiman, and I thought he did a really great job. I was engaged in the story from the very beginning and found myself thinking about this story when I wasn’t listening to it.

It starts off with the main character who is unnamed, returning to his home town. He visits a farm house near his childhood home he remembers visiting as a child. Here he sits out back by the pond trying to figure out why he was drawn here. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the plot because this book is really short. So here’s my thoughts.

What I Loved

1. The atmosphere of this book was so dark and mysterious. This was my first Neil Gaiman book but I’ve heard all of this books are really atmospheric. The farm and area surrounding it were really mysterious and magical. I thought Gaiman did a great job of explaining what was happening without taking away the magical-ness of the setting.
2. I fell in love with the Hempstock family. They were easily my favorite characters in this book. They were so much fun and I loved the dynamic between all three women.
3. Ursala. Monkton. Holy crap, what a creepy, well written villain.

What I didn’t Like

1. There wasn’t much I didn’t like about this book, but the unnamed main character was probably the weakest part. I did really like that book was written from the perspective of a child. But overall the main character was a little boring.

Overall I loved this audiobook. The narration itself was great, and the story was a perfect, atmospheric, October read.

If you’ve read this, let me know what you thought!