Rating: 
Summary: The Best Book I've Read In A Long Time
Review: This book covers a difficult topic but does so with such tenderness and delicacy that something that is usually so sad and too hard for most to deal with becomes a poignant story of a young girls perspective on her own death. It is one of the best books I have read in a while and was a thought provoking but not demanding read. A good read for someone coming to terms with death or anyone who wants something really great to read over the Christmas break.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working on her case. As Sebold fashions it, everyone has his or her own version of heaven. Susie's resembles the athletic fields and landscape of a suburban high school: a heaven of her "simplest dreams," where "there were no teachers.... We never had to go inside except for art class.... The boys did not pinch our backsides or tell us we smelled; our textbooks were Seventeen and Glamour and Vogue." The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while still clinging to the lost world of the living, following her family's dramas over the years like an episode of My So-Called Afterlife. Her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of the new hole in his family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through the milestone events of her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. Random acts and missed opportunities run throughout the book--Susie recalls her sole kiss with a boy on Earth as "like an accident--a beautiful gasoline rainbow." Though sentimental at times, The Lovely Bones is a moving exploration of loss and mourning that ultimately puts its faith in the living and that is made even more powerful by a cast of convincing characters. Sebold orchestrates a big finish, and though things tend to wrap up a little too well for everyone in the end, one can only imagine (or hope) that heaven is indeed a place filled with such happy endings.
Rating: 
Summary: Look out for this turkey!
Review: 1 star-for marketing, 0 stars- for writing. What starts off with a decent hook and a rather clever idea of heaven, quickly decends into a morass of syrupy narrative, unbeliveably trite dialogue and cardboard characters. Many, many plot holes and an annoying tendency for the characters to make leaps to correct and crucial decisions out of nowhere. I could see this book marketed as a light read for the teenagers, mostly female, but certainly not to any reader looking for a book that is "destined to become a classic."
Here is a small sample of the writing that set my teeth on edge:
"She pulled Len in to her and slowly kissed him on the mouth. He seemed to hesitate at first. His body tensed, telling him NO, but that NO became vague and cloudy, became air sucked into the intake fan of the humming hydrant beside them. She reached up and unbuttoned her raincoat. He placed his hand against the thin gauzy material of her summer gown." (pg. 148)
WHEW!!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: This book is about Susie Salmon, a girl who was murdered at fourteen. The book focuses less on her murder and more on her life. You follow along with her as she looks on from heaven at the people that affected her while she was alive. The book made me laugh and cry many times over. It grips you at the first sentence. It was one of the best books I have ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: Bleak to funny; realistic to far-fetched
Review: Alice Sebold begins a disturbing story, continues it with realism and innocence, adds a little humor some rather strange fantasy, and wraps up with a slightly cynical fate for the villain. The story manages to combine realistic detail with a lot of imagination. The engrossing tale follows various survivors -- the victim's sister, father, friends through their travails over her death. The victim herself watches from any chosen viewpoint, as an omniscent narrator. The story is a little rambling with so many characters' feelings to follow, but still easy to read. Finally, the ending is not entirely satisfying, but is probably more realistic for it, as the perpetrator goes on to kill again before his ultimate demise. Is it at the hand of a victim? You decide.
Rating:
Summary: A Different Look at Subjects We All Think About
Review: After hearing about this book for ages now, I finally purchased it. The story was very well written, yet it seemingly kept going over the same subjects and aspects of the crime and victims. It's definitely written in a somewhat dreamlike state, as it allows the reader to stand back and make their own judgements nd ponder their own feelings. I also felt like the book was resolved in an odd way. It all culminates in a few short pages, which left me feeling displaced and wondering. It built up to a hefty climax, but disappointed me in some ways. I enjoyed the book due to its overall quality of writing, in addition to the perspective of the narrator, who is ultimately dead. Just several standout qualities like that make the book entirely worth your time. As for the resolution and the overall storyline, it starts out on a fast pace and then gets slower. However, a decade passes and the reader is left to wonder about the family feelings and happenings during those times. Basically the poor aspects of the book revolve around an unclear resolution, choppy (if not brief) character sketches, and time passing so slow in the beginning, but very fast at the end. Overall, it's highly worth the time to read it. However, expect to be internally nagged by the climax and ultimate point of the novel.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Stocking Stuffer!
Review: I felt compelled to offer a simple review of this book after having read some less favorable customer reviews. I have recommended this book to both my family & friends, something that I am not in the habit of doing. I have never submitted a review for a book I've read before, but I do so now to encourage others to be touched by a emotionally charged story about family perserverance, lasting friendship, and perhaps most of all, eternal life. This is a must read!!!
Rating:
Summary: Novel point of view
Review: Sebold's novel Lovely Bones is refreshing in that it tells the story from the point of view of the victim. The victims in our society have no voice. In literal accounts our news media can only interview police, family, friends and with "luck" the murderer. Suzie is on the verge of exploding into the next stage of her life when she's lured away, murdered and taken from Earth. Her family is left to miss her and love her and wonder who she would have become. The novel chronicles what crime does to a the psyches of wide circle of people: their emotions encompass the missing, the grief, the wondering, the depression,the anger, the fear, the pain. Suzie sees her family and friends dealing with the stares, whispers, the feelings of being apart from the "normal" world; worrying about other loved ones; trying to trust others again and finally going forward into the future without dragging the pain of the past everywhere. The ending has a touch of miracle that I wish all victims could savor to give their souls rest.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary Premise on "Heaven"
Review: This is not a startling new thought or book about a young girl being ... and murdered. This happens every day in most every community. What is so compelling is how the author sets the scene of Susie's "individual heaven". A premise, so new to me, and perhaps to others, who really have not given much thought to there being a heaven. As Susie freely moves into and out of the everyday lives of her shattered family and friends, you feel her pain and frustration that she cannot truly intervene and that closure will only come with......read the book - it is so thought provoking that I am rethinking my own personal thoughts on heaven and hell.
Rating:
Summary: thought provoking
Review: having lost a son in 2001, I first thought this would not be a book I could read, however, I picked it up at my nieces and was
immediatly drawn in. It's a refreshing view of what heaven could be like and how our loved ones may be communicating with us. I like thinking about my son in this manner rather than some of the other senarios we have been taught in our lifetimes. I love Alice's writing there were many beautiful passages that I will go back to for comfort. If you are open-minded about death and have had time to digest the death of a loved one, you should read this!
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