Rating: 
Summary: Great Book, but an unsatisfying ending...
Review: I loved reading this novel and feel the author has a lot of talent. Alice Sebold's writing style and her little jewels of descriptions and metaphors grabbed me from the beginning of the book. I found myself wishing the story would continue (a sure sign of a good book, in my opinion). Then the ending came and ruined the reading experience and left a less than satisfying taste in my memory of great books. I hoped for a better resolution, some answers, or just some profound advice on living for the reader, and yet it felt incomplete--as if the writer had to meet a deadline. Maybe there was a profound answer that I didn't catch, but I felt the ending was too neatly wrapped and superficial compared to the rest of the novel (which offered an interesting vision of heaven).Would still recommend this book to any teen to adult reader. Quick and easy read too.
Rating: 
Summary: Mesmerizing Ghost Story
Review: Reading this brief, intense, and mesmerizing novel is an almost extra-literary experience. The startling mix of gentle tone and gruesome tale grips from the first lines -- and before long I felt as if I were dreaming the story rather then reading it. I found it difficult to concentrate on anything else while not reading, and finally had to put everything on hold just to finish the damn thing (and yes, dreamed vividly of being in the story while still in the midst of reading it.) The Lovely Bones is a tough book to describe -- it feels kind of like the greatest Young Adult novel ever written. Mixing girl's coming of age, suspense, and romance elements with a clear eyed portrait of overwhelming grief, peopled with vividly realized, familiar-yet-mysterious characters, its as pure a page turner as anything Stephen King ever penned, yet from page one evokes a visceral emotional response. There's a unique sense of wonder here, a hard-earned tenderness shimmering throughout. As powerful as The Lovely Bones feels while you're reading it, the novel seems to shrink immediately upon completion -- in memory, the story feels a little small, the characters and conclusion in the end a bit too affirming. But this takes little away from the transporting experience of reading this peculiar and penetrating tale.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling, heart breaking, the best book I've read in years
Review: The premise as narrator-the 14 year old murder victim telling the story from her heaven-was itself captivating. On page one she tells you she was murdered. I was bolled over. In another page you know who the murderer is, and with a near flawless literary style Sebold keeps you hooked to the very end. No book has ever tugged at my heart like this one with so many varied emotional responses.
I LOVED IT!
Rating:
Summary: A Comforting Way to View a Tragic Event
Review: This book warmed my heart, made me cry, laugh and exclaim outloud sometimes all within the same page. I found that she really didn't give the family closure at the end but showed that after more years of mourning and destroying themselves than is imaginable they are finally able to move on with their lives without their daughter. I was pleased that many things were not resolved like the finding of her body because in real life many times this is also the case. It gave me hope that should something like this ever happen to my family I could think of the person I lost going on in heaven like Susie does in the book. This book takes the reader through something incredibly tragic but it is not uncomfortable to read and enjoy. I will be looking for more books from this author thanks to her fantasic style and viewpoint.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This book is written in a style that makes it impossible to put down the book. The psychological profiles of the characters in the book are portrayed in a very likable and interesting fashion.
I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes to see character with very well devloped personalities.
Rating:
Summary: Not a crime story
Review: This is not a crime story. The method in which Susie dies is almost irrelevant - her murder a pretext. The sheer intensity of the emotions examined in "The Lovely Bones" was intoxicating. I found myself on the train from work fighting back tears of sadness, frustration and joy in such quick succession that I had to stop reading to catch my breath. This is a study on the fragility of relationships and the complexity of emotions felt by individuals experiencing the same loss. Each of the characters in this novel experience the loss of Susie, but in so many different ways - some healthy, some not so much. I agree that the end might have been a bit "happy" and one can speculate, unrealistic; however, in order to fully appreciate the depth of the feelings examined, I think it had to end on a relatively high note. Otherwise leaving so much weight to bear that the reader would be unable to digest any one piece fully. The concentration was on the examination of human emotions, not on the particulars of her death. As a matter of fact, towards the end, I thought it obvious that the story of her murder and her murderer's capture had become secondary. Almost awkward interjections with updates of his whereabouts were scattered through the last third of the book. Ms Sebold's flowing prose drew me in from page one and didn't release me until I'd finished the Acknowledgements. I will be recommending this book to everyone I know.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Presentation
Review: I like the way Alice Sebold came up with putting the whole story within the framework of fantasy, beginning in heaven. That's what makes this book different and fascinating. If you liked "The Lovely Bones", I recommend that you next read another book I have read that is similarly presented, a book called "West Point...", by Norman Thomas Remick
Rating: 
Summary: A rambling, bumpy road of a novel
Review: I agree with many of the positive things said about this book. I found it fresh and perhaps memorable, yet disappointing in the end. I remember thinking at several times: is she really going to wrap this up, or just run out of pages? The end was a bit of each, and not entirely satisfying. I found the writing clunky to the point of being distracting. Basically Susie is musing, and her thoughts jump around a lot. The author switches timelines (switching from flashback to present tense) with no warning. I found many sentences long and disorganized with too many ideas, and I had to read some of them a few times just to parse their meaning. A big distraction for me was logical errors. A character hears her flight being called... from outside of a terminal building at Chicago's O'Hare airport, where she's having a cigarette... but they don't call flights there. (Unimportant spoiler follows). We learn that her killer has dismembered her with only a knife, but that in his sloppiness he left behind an elbow that a neighborhood dog brought home. Any cook who has cut up a chicken knows that it's very difficult to cut through bones, so one cuts through joints instead. To have an elbow left behind after dismemberment is ridiculous. You can call these nits and call me a literalist, both of which are true, but when I found myself bored with the story, my mind wandered to consider these problems instead of paying attention to the story. Distracting errors.
Rating: 
Summary: Great premise, good writing, didn't like the book.
Review: Kudos to Ms. Sebold for getting her first novel published and becoming a best-seller. That said, I think most people are ...in by the original premise of the novel. Some of the writing is good and Ms. Sebold clearly has talent. However, I found the book to be a difficult read (shifts in tone, unbelievable characters, plodding story-line). I guess it's a story about loss and how it affects various people. I didn't much care about any of the characters so I didn't feel their pain. The first chapter is promising and there are other bits of excellent writing, but as a whole, the novel doesn't work. Maybe she needed a better editor? There are flaws in logic (no one from her neighborhood dies and enters heaven over the eight-year span of the story? the dog dies and shows up in heaven, but not the grandmother?) And I swear some of the sentences just didn't make any sense. The mother/detective relationship was not believable. The detective was incompetent, but romancing the mother? I don't think so. I also had serious problems when the father (thanks to Susie's help) identifies the murderer. In any event, I became bored with the book and struggled to get through it. When it turned sci-fi (Susie inhibits Ruth's body) near the end, I completely lost interest. The ending ties everything up into a nice bow, but the death of Mr. Harvey (in terms of how he dies) was stupid. Again, a great premise, but not a great read.
Rating:
Summary: A LOVELY LITTLE BOOK
Review: Similar in concept to the film Ghost (starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore), the novel's dead narrator Susie Salmon is able to look down from the afterlife on the lives of family and friends she left behind after her brutal rape and murder.
Alice Sebold has managed to lighten the gruesome, gritty subject matter in an uplifting way with a lively read, which is often very funny at times; bringing tears of joy as well as sadness; and helping the reader to step back a little (just like 14-year-old Susie in her heaven) as the tragic, traumatic events unfold in front of us. As well as the hell going on on Earth, we're given an insight into the idealistic heaven Susie now inhabits; cleverly pictured as a perfect world with counsellors for the newly admitted and girlie roommates to share experiences and settle in with.
This is powerful, thought-provoking book that will chill you to the bone - make no mistake. Be warned - some readers might find it disturbing and distressing in the wake of the recent, all-too-familiar news coverage of abducted schoolgirls murdered in real life. Some comfort can be taken, however, from Susie's apparent contentment and resigned (to her fate) happiness in heaven. The love she holds so dearly for her distraught family never dies.
Alice Sebold is a fantastic new voice in fiction, and The Lovely Bones is a beautiful, haunting book that you'll keep going back to and cherish. What gives the novel all the more poignancy is the knowledge that the author herself is a courageous rape survivor. I highly recommend her memoir Lucky, which reads like a novel in itself, in which she recounts her struggle of recovery from her ordeal and her eventual fight for justice. Lucky is the ideal companion book for The Lovely Bones - and for gaining further insight into the life of Alice Sebold and the inspiration for her original and truly remarkable writing.
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