Neverwhere (London Below, #1) by Neil Gaiman

My rating: three stars

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Edition: Audiobook

Goodreads Summary: Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: Neverwhere.

I actually read this book because it was a recommendation from my boyfriend. He doesn’t read books often but he does listen to audiobooks occasionally. This is one of the audiobooks he said that he actually liked, so I wanted to see what it was all about. 

Likes: I really enjoy the writing style of the author. It is quite different from most books that I read and I found that refreshing. He had a quirky way of writing that kept things interesting and he made sure to describe things in depth which helped me picture the world. Speaking of the world, London Below was SO neat! It was so similar to London but at the same time different. I don’t know how Neil Gaiman thinks up half of the things that were in this book but they were awesome! For example (not a spoiler), there are a society of mice that hire these people who are basically their translators for humans. It was pretty funny. There were many more unique ideas like this and it made the story a lot of fun to listen to. 

Dislikes: The main negative thing about the book was that it was confusing. I think it was partially the story line and partially because I am more easily confused when I listen to audiobooks. When I read physical books I can go back and reread something if I don’t understand it, whereas in audiobooks that is more difficult to do. So the fact that this world was so different than ours, and so many things were going on in the story line, I was a little confused at times. I think the audiobook version of the story just didn’t allow me to fully immerse myself in the story and I would love to get the physical copy so that I could re-read it. There aren’t any negative aspects to the story that I can think of, I was mainly turned off because of the confusion and complexity. 
Overall, I did really enjoy this book. It was a fun world and story line, I had a great time listening to it. The two main antagonists were a funny duo, their personalities were conflicting and it caused some comedic scenes even though they were ultimately terrible people. I would recommend this story, the characters were well flushed-out, the world was amusing, and the story line was a fun journey. I still would like to read the physical copy to see if I am less confused though.