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TRIGGER WARNINGS for this book: Child abuse (including ripping down doors and emotional abuse). Attempted drowning/near-drowning. Food deprivation. Suicide (minor character). Off-screen pet death.

So, yes, the fact that this book triggered me extremely just around page 74 is obviously influencing my opinion. I can't fault Gaiman entirely, it's not as if he intended to hurt me. But as an author, he should assume responsibility (just like all other authors should as well) and push publishers to include trigger warnings in books.
I'm in a bad enough state as it is at the moment, I don't need for my main escape route to make me want to kill myself by blindsiding me with a scene that could have been copied from my childhood. Nor do I need for that kind of abuse to then be "snipped out" and make everyone forget about it, victim and perpetrator and witnesses, because of course only a naked woman-flea could ever make a "parent" hurt a child. Fuck that shit right up the ear. Child abuse is a serious subject and shouldn't be used for shock value.

Also, this book is pretty much a Manic Pixie Dream Girl fantasy, minus the sexual aspects. Middle-aged man remembers the girl he knew as a child, who taught him to love and be whole and who saved his life and blahblahblah. And yes, she sacrifices for him, as the womenfolkz must do because the menfolkz are just born stupid, didn'tchaknow?
Sure, having your all-powerful godlike people be women, I could get behind that. Except they only really exist for the benefit of the protagonist's spiritual journey. The fact that most of the book is the protagonist remembering his seven-year-old self doesn't change that, because not only does that strike me as a rather cheap attempt to avoid the MPDG label, the protagonist is also still a middle-aged man in the beginning and the end. Lettie is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl to him, not much of a character in her own right.

It also doesn't make it any better that the younger sister of the protagonist is a pain who doesn't see reality, that the mother is notieably absent from much of the story, and that the father is great though flawed, but not too badly, until the evil seductress makes him hurt his son.
We have three female characters on either side: Lettie, Ginnie and Gran are the good females who further the protagonist's emotional journey. Sister, mother and Ursula Monkton (evil seductress flea) are the bad females who, some intentionally and some not, are obstacles to the protagonist's emotional journey.
They all just exist for the benefit of a protagonist with a penis. If expanding on any of these characters as real characters would have bloated the book too much, the problem could still have been fixed by making the protagonist a girl. Sure, it wouldn't make it much better, but it would have made it seem decidedly less sexist.

I think this would have been better had it been more about a thorough exploration into the world that Gaiman was hinting on here. The concept and creatures came very much out of nowhere. It's perfectly alright, and even good, to create completely new worlds and ideas, but springing them on a reader so promptly and with so little explanation just makes it a bit confusing.
This really could have been fixed if the book was from Lettie's perspective. For that matter, it could have fixed this issue and the sexism issue and would have been far more interesting.
Instead, the protagonist is just another white everyman who has to make himself feel better by going back into his ultra-nostalgic, cuteness overload childhood threatened by his father cheating on his mother (and of course the person mostly being blamed is the harlot making him cheat instead of the manwhore putting his penis into places - and yes, I'm doubting the official version the book gave me). Because of course, white men and boys are the default focus for every story. Can't have anyone with a vagina be the protagonist - people just wouldn't be able to relate!

Suffice to say, I'm really losing interest in these stories about average men finding their meaning in life through the inspiration of women. Women aren't muses for your emotional boner, we're people. We're readers.
And I, for one, find nothing relatable in a white, male protagonist who has it all, almost loses it and then has it all again, without having to do anything on his own because the womenfolk save him and help him and still he is the one with the happy end, not them. Because they aren't characters, they're just props to the play of his life.
Everything is a prop to the play of his life, really. His childhood is amazing and worth being nostalgic about! Now how do we kick up some drama? Of course, child abuse! Look how miserable he is! Pity him! PITY HIM, HEATHEN! And now look, it's all amazing and nostalgia-worthy again, because little white boys deserve better than to have to deal with the consequences of domestic abuse for the rest of their lives, and no one will be able to relate if the little white boy has such a tragedy hanging over his life! It's not as if readers exist who had to overcome horrid shit in their childhoods (and, legasp, they come with all forms of genitalia!). It's not as if they would like for their pain to be treated as more than just a temporary obstacle on the emotional journey of the white everyman.

The sad thing is, I wanted to like this book. I vaguely remember liking Coraline, and everyone seems to always be hyping Neil Gaiman to infinity and beyond. But this? This was just... I want to say, offensive, which it is, but it's more than that. It's an instruction manual for a book about the white everyman who needs womenfolkz to make his life better, because apparently getting a sports car, a leather jacket and antidepressants (or just viagra and a craigslist hook-up) is out of style. It's a portrait of the white man in his midlife crisis. It's...
Holy shit.

It's Bridge to Terabithia.

I was even imagining Leslie as Lettie.

LE-tt-IE = LE-sl-IE.

I'm guessing Zooey Deschanel was already cast for the movie adaptation.

It's really not worth the time to read it, even given how short it is. If the trigger warnings at the beginning of my review don't bother you and you're okay with a completely unknown mythology just sprung on you, then I suppose it's a fit for you. Under those conditions, it's certainly alright for bus or train rides to pass the time. But apart from that, I can't recommend it.

At least the cover is nice.