A recent rearrangement of my bookshelf revealed 10 books I wasn’t aware I owned. One from Sidney Sheldon, John Grisham, and an apparently thrilling Jeffrey Archer twinkled at me from the painstakingly arranged rows, begging to be read. But start a Sidney Sheldon, and I knew my textbooks would gather dust, exams forgotten. So I picked up a small, unassuming book I’d bought years ago and forgotten about. Its childish, cartoony cover promised a refreshing, light read.

Inquisitive, forthright, and characterized by the uncomplicated voice that children lose as they become bungling adults, Coraline held me spellbound from the start. The book starts off with Coraline being bored with the world around her, irritated by her loving but busy parents’ disinterest in entertaining her, and altogether longing for adventure. The first time she finds the mysterious door, it opens only to a brick wall. However, when she tries it again, she walks into a house just like hers. A mother and father, just like hers, except with black button eyes, want her to stay with them and be their little girl.

The book goes from mildly creepy to fantastically terrifying in a span of about 20 pages, and will leave you lost to the world around you, rooting for the spunky little girl who, despite her normally childlike outlook, occasionally makes intelligent observations like “I don’t want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn’t mean anything? What then?”

Coraline’s direct language is refreshing. There are no attempts to use fancy metaphors to describe beauty, no mincing words, and no attempts to impress by using innumerable similes and whatnot. But it is real, rendered in simplistic, honest language that has an impact that a hundred literary devices couldn’t have managed. This gem of a book is sweet, simple, and utterly horrifying.