The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

I really enjoyed reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane, but it didn't quite do for me what I thought it would.

It is as a work of Gaiman, incredibly well written, full of amazing characters and creatures and the oddest imaginations, fantastic prose etc etc. As expected,with the exception of Stardust, every single thing I've read that he's written has been brilliant, and so is this.

And yet, I just don't love it. Not quite.

It's hard to review a book when your feelings are this mixed up. I just cannot put a finger on what exactly bothers me which is why it's taken me 2 months to even write this sorry excuse of a review. Peace out.

	The Ocean at the End of the Lane  by Neil Gaiman ISBN13: 9781472200327 248 pages / published in 2013
	Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2014