This is a book about magic - the horrifying magic of childhood, and the misleading magic of memory. It's written very much like a children's book, though Gaiman includes a couple of "adult moments", maybe to clarify that this is not one of his children's books. The book is mostly told through the eyes of a seven year old, though at times the narrator, who is in fact that child as an adult, pulls back and gives a more grown up interpretation of what he saw, again, "adult moments", and there is no attempt to rationalize what is experienced. The child simply absorbs and accepts everything as true, which might not give enough credit to children (or give them too much credit), but this strengthens the feeling of a children's book.
I heard this as an audiobook, the Gaiman's haunting performance added much to the text. It may have helped that I dozed off near the end and the story and my own dreams may have mixed to some extent. The story certainly has a dreamlike quality to is, like much of Gaiman's work.
Some of the observations about childhood vs. adulthood were a bit cliche and overdone, but I enjoyed Gaiman's ever inventive story. I think parents will probably like this story more than readers in the twenties, who might not feel the full emotional horror of one of the key scenes in the book, that drives a lot of the psychological action later on. But this is a book that should appeal to anyone who still remembers what it's like being a kid.