This is my 4th Neil Gaiman book. The blurb was so different from his previous works I had to pick this up especially considering this seemed to be a romantic story. But I went into this cautiously not wanting to be disappointed after reading such good reviews. 
 Now only when Tristan embarks on his journey to fetch the fallen star for his beloved Victoria did I realize this story seemed so familiar (the blurb didn't jolt my memory nor did the origin story of Tristan Thorn). 1 minute on Google and I realized I had seen the movie a few years back. So I knew what was coming and the star was not a surprise. 
 After that it became hard to separate the book from the movie because I kept picturing the scenes and most of the book has been faithfully adapted in the movie. I waited eagerly for Captain Shakespeare to make an appearance on the flying ship but that seems to have been a character added just for the movies and was actually disappointed because all the other characters had been written so well. I also pictured the original star cast through out the book and hence couldn't come up with my own set of actors for the role. 
 I did find Tristan more annoying in the book than in the movie though. I also appreciated the names of the Stormhold princes better this time around. 
 The ending of the movie is very different from the book. (view spoiler)[In the movie, there is a fight scene between the dead puppet Septimus and Tristan, the witch is killed and Tristan and Yvaine become stars once Tristan has lived his life. What happens in the book is that Septimus dies by the hands of the witch albeit in a different way, the witch is just ignored in the end because she is too weak to do any harm and Tristan dies leaving Yvaine to gaze at the skies for eternity (hide spoiler)]. I think both endings were good and stayed true to the format of the story telling. 
 So rating this book is really hard because of the influence of the movie and so this would be a 3.5 star for me. It would have easily been a 4 star otherwise as I would have enjoyed the originality of the story more.