Rating: 
Summary: Seeking a fresh writer? Sebold is it!
Review: Alice Sebold slides easily into the world of a fourteen year old, and brought this reader back to what it feels like to be that age. I am also a mother, and knowing the basics of this book (that involves the rape and murder of a young teenager), I was hesitant and somewhat anxious about the subject matter. I was not prepared for the comforting, calm tone in which the narrator reveals her story. It is the tone of the story that reveals Alice Sebold to be a fresh new writer.
Rating: 
Summary: Lost interest
Review: When I first started this book, I couldn't put it down, although a morbid sad story, it got me hooked. Unfortunately, I found the mothers reaction to the situation rather hard to believe, as hard as I tried to put myself in her shoes, I just could never ever abandon the rest of my family. I also thought it was strange how the murderer could just disappear from the neighborhood without being located, to me it was just too unreal, so therefore I lost interest toward the end. I also agree with another reader as far as the closure at the end.
Rating: 
Summary: Started Out Good, But...
Review: I started out really liking this book and would have actually recommended it. But, then I started reading the last quarter of the book. What a cop out to end the book the way she did. A first grader could have seen it coming...which makes it all the worse in my opinion. The very ending with Mr. Harvey was the worst of it in my opinion. What had been a very well written book turned to a wrap up of the book that was meant to make the reader feel better about what had happened.
Rating: 
Summary: A waste of time and money...
Review: I've never written a review before but I just had to jump in here with this one. I have never read a more boring book. Bestseller? Yes. Came highly recommended? Yes. But I can't imagine why.It starts out okay, but it never goes anywhere. You just keep wondering when SOMETHING is going to happen. I was at the end of
the book before I realized that NOTHING more was going to happen.
There was no great story here. No development of characters.
Not even much of a plot. Everything you wanted to know about the book can be found out by reading the jacket and the inside cover.
It goes nowhere... Save your money. But if you must read it, borrow a copy from someone. Or better yet...I'll give you mine!
Rating:
Summary: A gripping novel
Review: Alice Sebold succeeded in keeping my attention throughout the book. It deals with the impact a young girls murder has on the people that are left behind. And naturally one keeps reading to find out if the killer is finally caught. But that becomes of minor importance as the story passes the years after the killing. The idea of telling it from the girl that watches from heaven is perfect. although the book gives little clues on what heaven really looks like.
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Summary: Great Book!!
Review: Wow! I read this book and in no time at all was I finding it hard to put down. The more I read the harder it was to set down. This author really captures the sincerity of a young girl who is raped and murdered. She takes you on an unforgetable journey through the lives of the Salmon family. I would recomend this book to be part of any high school reading list or list of books to read for pleasure. A must have in my home library. This is a book that you will read time and time again, I know that I have.
Rating: 
Summary: I anticipated that I would love this book.....
Review: but there was something missing in it, for me. Instead, I liked the book enormously, but didn't necessarily enjoy it. Alice Sebold has done an amazing job with a first novel; you can tell she's been writing a long time, and it will be interesting to see her other works. Her style is very visual, and her words flow like poetry, until she wants you to sit up and take notice; and then she will write something so arresting, that you're not sure how you got around that corner. Heroine Susie Salmon has very few years on earth, and so even the small things about her life are featured in Sebold's beautiful prose: "I loved the way the burned-out flshcubes of the Kodak Instamatic marked a moment that had passed,.....When they were spent, I took the cubed four-corner flashbulbs and passed them from hand to hand until they cooled. ...I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way had found a way to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from me because I owned it." Sebold took a visionary point of view, that of the dead girl, and utilized it to tell the story of a family in shambles following a single, telling act of violence. For me, it helped to explain why this seems to happen to families when violence shatters their worlds. In Mr. Harvey, Sebold's villain, a character so dark and fearful exists, that surely he must be played on film by the masterful Anthony Hopkins. There is a central passage in the novel, after the violence and the tone is set, and before a surprising twist near the end, where the novel breaks down, moves slowly, covers the same ground over and over. During this time, Susie is so passive and sad, that it makes it difficult to read on. But read on, I did, and was glad that I had. The Lovely Bones is a work to be experienced, not just read, and it deserves a wide following. I'm sure it will invoke a lot of passion, both pro and con, for the story, and, isn't that what great writing is all about. The Lovely Bones - a 2002 bestseller, and richly deserved.
Rating:
Summary: Not quite the Second Coming of fiction
Review: This book has been so hyped this year that I was dying (pardon the phrase) to read it. When it finally came in at my library, I started reading it that night. The first 80 pages or so are indeed gripping, but then they begin flashing forward by months and years at a time, and it feels rushed. So it's good, but not quite worth the hype.
Rating:
Summary: Movie of the week
Review: When I read the blurb for The Lovely Bones, I had no idea how popular it was. Then I bought it and read it and have no idea why it's so popular. The plot is an interesting one. The beginning is very strong and emotional. Yet beyond the beginning and the promising plot is really just bad writing. The dialogue alone is laughable and made me(when I wasn't laughing) cringeing at some of the VERY sappy sentiments. Yes this is an emotional subject matter, but that doesn't excuse lines such as "she seasoned her toast with her tears" GOD! Who wrote this, a 16 year old? This novel reads as though Sebold took a creative writing course and took everything that the hack that taught it told her to write, seriously. If you're interested in how a family copes with the murder of a daughter in a realistic way, I wouldn't say this is the book. But I'm sure it will be a movie! Hopefully the screen writer will be better than Sebold!
Rating:
Summary: loved it.
Review: I read a ton of books and it seems like there has been nothing interesting out for months, not even over the summer, but this one I picked up and it hooked me right from the start. I liked the way the story was told. We seem to have a real need to know what happens to us following death and this book had a interesting look at death and the afterlife's influence on the way life continues back on earth. I like the way the main character continued to mature even after her death and how she cared for those left behind. I'm sure hollywood will snatch this one up.
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