My Reaction in a Nutshell: 
 I never knew that gods could be so boring. 
 The Long Version: 
 So I hear on Tumblr a lot about how great Neil Gaiman books are. So, perhaps I began reading American Gods with too high of expectations. I assumed that the book would be so amazing that I would never be bored. I assumed that it would be action packed. But alas, none of those things actually occurred. 
 I struggled rating American Gods. At times I wanted to give it 3 (sometimes even 2) stars and other times I felt that it deserved 4 stars. Parts of the book were boring. Actually, the last 200 pages were a near crawl. For all the buildup the book had it really didn't amount to much. So I decided to split the middle and give it 3 stars. 
 I really liked the character Shadow. He was interesting. At times he was the brutish muscle-man, other times philosophical, sometimes incredibly smart, other times incredibly dumb. It was really interesting and at one point even one of the characters in the book points it out too. However, I hated how easily he accepted this crazy new reality with various gods. Yes, I know it's fantasy, but come on people, at least make it somewhat believable. 
 It's bad when the only interesting part of a book is its beginning. There were many times during this book where it would have a side storyline about a particular god (that usually left me very confused) and I thought that those side storylines would make sense at the end, but very few of them did. Plus, sometimes the wording of Gaiman's book was weird and really awkward sounding. 
 Overall, it wasn't a bad book. There were some surprises that I didn't see coming, some surprises that I totally did see coming, and a lot of scenes that just left me plain confused. I liked the beginning more than the middle and end. If the book had the same level of mystery, suspense, and pacing as the beginning then I probably would have loved this book. Unfortunately it gave me none of those things and instead added heaping piles of boredom and confusion. 
 ***TRIGGER WARNINGS: prostitution, incarceration, coercion, indentured servitude, adultery, death, murder, car accident, suicide, slavery, racism, mentions of R