I liked that each person added more detail to the monster; this would make a fun read-aloud. The ending made me laugh. Darkly humorous.

Teenage Penryn is living in Silicon Valley with her wheelchair-bound young sister Paige and her paranoid schizophrenic mother when the angel Gabriel comes down from heaven and is killed by humans, kickstarting a global reign of angelic terror. Penryn is tough and brave and loyal and a wonderful heroine, and she is joined in her fight to save her family by the wingless angel Raffe, a brooding enigma of a creature (though I feel he should be allowed some slack as he did have his wings cut off). I wish Ee hadn't skirted around the issues of religion that make angel literature so much more compelling than, say, vampire literature, because an entire book about a human woman and an angel man running from place to place is never going to be as engrossing as a story that confronts the fears and needs of humanity.

A delightfully zany children's book about a father who tells a marvelously outrageous tale to explain why it took him so long to walk to the store and buy milk. Gaiman's narration is a delight, as always.

Shelby has spent the last six years living her life according to the three promises she made to her dying mother, and now for the first time they are conflicting in a way that has Shelby convinced she has to lose her virginity in the next five weeks. What follows is a predictable and often awkward tale as Shelby learns for herself what the promises really mean. This book is saved by the strong supporting characters and Shelby's humor and sarcasm, and there are a few very touching scenes. I'd recommend as a quick read to a teenager struggling with their notions of sex and God.

Coraline is a preternaturally calm young girl with parents who are so disinterested in her that an otherworldly creature has come to show her a life where her parents love her and adore her and only cook food that she likes -- but Coraline is not entirely sure that she wants to live in a world like that. This story has all the fixtures of a good middle grade novel -- bad parents, an inquisitive and bright child, a talking cat, and a magical other world -- but it also has all the fixin's of a good Neil Gaiman novel -- namely, it is creeptastic and haunting and more or less perfect. I highly recommend the audio as Neil Gaiman reads it perfectly and the rat's creepy singing is spine-tingling.

It wasn't a very good story, and the art is pretty terrible, and the gang initiation that the boy Red watches has an already racist drawing that looks like a kid is about to be raped by another kid, so overall I'm pretty creeped out.