Publisher: HarperCollins

I received this book for free from HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

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.

This was such a fun audiobook to listen to. It was a full cast which really made the book come to life. Not only was it a full cast audio, it also had sound effects and music. Each of the narrators did fabulous at the various characters. This book was fun and a bit creepy. Made more creepy by the audio at certain points. Nobody Owens was such a great character and I loved “reading” about him growing up in the graveyard and how he feels about the world outside the graveyard. He has been raised in the graveyard by ghosts ever since he was a baby and his family was murdered. This was one of the coolest audiobooks I have listened to.

Nobody Owens is a character who goes through many changes as he grows up. His life is obviously much different than a typical child since he is living with ghosts. He does not have any interactions with the outside world until he is much older with the exception of a little girl Scarlett who he briefly meets before she moves away. He does go to real school eventually, but ends up leaving after he realizes that he doesn’t fit in and he doesn’t want to draw anymore attention to himself. Once he learns of his family’s murder, he gets set on revenge. He is not a bad child, he just wants to make things right. He really is such an innocent boy with very limited life experience so seeing him go through some of the situations is really interesting.

The rest of the characters are awesome too. I loved getting to know them. Each of them was very individual and well developed. I think that the audio really helped with that since there was a full cast of narrators to voice them. Bod’s “parents” were very old fashioned since they lived a long time ago. They were charming and cute. We actually didn’t get a lot of them, but I did enjoy what we did get. I really liked Silas, who was Bod’s guardian. He was quite interesting. Scarlett was such a great character as both a little girl and when she returned when she was older. Then we had The Man Jack, who was the murderer. The limited time we got with him was chilling and great. The best character audio wise was the Sleer, which I don’t know if I spelled correctly since I didn’t physically read it. It actually gave me the chills when the Sleer spoke. The first time I actually got slightly creeped out since I was driving on a random back road at night.

Overall this story was fun and kept me interested. I don’t know that it would have been as good to me had I read it myself, but the audio was really fantastic. Just rating on the audio alone it would be a 5, but since I need to factor in how I actually felt about the story I need to lower the rating a bit. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did, but it didn’t blow me away. It was entertaining while it lasted, but nothing that will stick with me for very long. The writing was great, the characters were great, and the creepy factor was just enough for the age group intended. This was a solid book that I think people of all ages will enjoy, especially on audio!!

3.5 Hot Espressos