I guess you could call it "clean scary", the scariness in it doesn't come from gory disgusting things. Don't really recall if there was a lot of swearing in it... so can't help you there.

Are you going to be scarred from reading it, now there's the big question... that book is scary, absolutely. Scary in a subtler way than most horror, to be sure, and again, "clean scary", but scary nonetheless.

Of course, there's a lot more to it than just the scariness - a whole experience, as you say, and some parts of it aren't scary so much. Some people might even get bored and not find the scary parts worth making it through the entire book. But I for one think it's brilliant, both the scary and the non-scary.