"Coraline" by Neil Gaiman

This book is creepy.

I honestly don't know what else to say about it. It's about a girl, named Coraline (not Caroline), who discovers that the bricked-up doorway in her flat actually leads to a scary mirror-world inhabited by a reality-warping monster who pretends to be Coraline's mom and wants Coraline to stay with her forever. And who, in the grand tradition of reality-warping monsters everywhere, doesn't like being told "no." There's also a cat.

Coraline is one of the better child protagonists I've seen. She acts believably like a kid, she isn't 12 (I don't think she's 12, anyway), but despite being a realistic child she's not useless.

Most children's horror books (I'm looking at you, Creepover) are... not actually that scary. At all. Coraline is an exception. It genuinely frightens me, and that doesn't happen often. I'd actually read it once before (this review is being written after a reread), and that almost makes it worse, because now you know what's coming.

(Granted, I'm not the target audience for things like Creepover. But still. It's not that scary.) 

Oh yeah. My mom reviewed this.

[EDIT, 1/13/2026: Changed the cover image so it wasn't the one from the graphic novel.]

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for being really, really creepy, but otherwise having nothing else objectionable. That said, it would probably also be a really good horror videogame.

4 stars.

(Endnote: This review is part of my first completed quest.)