Rating: 
Summary: Elegant and thoughtful
Review: Fourteen year-old Susie Salmon is raped and murdered on a snowy afternoon by a neighbor. As she sits in heaven, or what she believes is heaven, Susie watches the affect that her murder has on her family and friends, and she tries to find some way to communicate with them, to let them know that she is all right.Alice Sebold is a marvelously inventive writer who uses her poetry background well. The language and the structure of this novel will delight readers who are accustomed to non-linear narratives. Others might find it too frustrating. The characters are well-written and believable, but there were some plot points that I thought hit a false note. But what is most appealing is Sebold's reassurance, through Susie, that heaven does exist, that the dead watch the living and try to help, that being dead is just a different kind of living.
Rating: 
Summary: a very good read
Review: The Lovely Bones is compelling. It is very well written with good character development, and strong narrative. It is a difficult subject, rape and murder, but the story is really about life and letting go. Well done!
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult
Review: This book was difficult to comprehend. The book got off to a good start, but dwindled off a third of the way through. I wonder how it got to the best sellers list? Probably b/c Good Morning America recommended it. Maybe Good Morning America should write me a check for [the money] I spent on this book.
Rating:
Summary: Poignant and provocative, worth the read!
Review: I admit. I was sceptical about this book. With all the disappearances and mayhem happening to children these days, who wants to read a book about a murdered 14-year old girl? The point is that the book is not about the crime, but the aftermath of tragedy. About the fragility of families and loved ones who have to go on with life after losing a part of it. This book made me wince at times. In fact, alot of it is unpleasant. But it paints effectively a picture of a young girl taken in the prime of life and how the dead interact with the living. No one knows what heaven is like, but I felt comforted by Susie Salmon's journey into the great hearafter. Its not tinged with sympathy or religion. Its an unabashed, honest account of death, grief and recovery. I was in tears when I finished this book. It is a powerful story filled with poignancy, heart and catharsis.
Rating:
Summary: Nice change of pace
Review: This is not typically the kind of book I read however I found it interesting having been written from the perspective of a 14 year old girl who had been murdered, watching down on earth from her heaven. Her family and friends trying to pick up the pieces and the police trying to find her murderer. Definitely a nice change of pace and one I would recommend to my friends.
Rating: 
Summary: A Tender Look Into A Horrifying Tragedy
Review: When child murder occurs, tenderness is supplanted with a myriad of horrifying human feelings and responses. How might one ever again get to tenderness unless through the eyes of the child victim. Only she may grant the wish of all others to feel sweet, vulnerable and whole again. No other perspective is possible in a pure form. I thank the author for at least an pixel of space to choose.
Rating:
Summary: not as gd as expected
Review: I camr to this book full of incredibly high hopes...hopes of a moving, beautifully realised, original and well written book. Well, it was well written, and quite original, i suppose. However, this book fails to deliver on some levels. I expectd to be moved...i was looking forward to be moved, and possibly shedding a tear or two...I expected to feel heartbreak at injustice and loss of potential of a young life, and the grief that surrounds that loss. However, this book is just to...sweet, for that. The premise is great, and the writing is first class, but Sebold, with a few exceptions, fails to move us greatly. Theres just, to be honest, not a lot to be sad about. Nothing to evoke a real tear...Sebold does not have that way with words that some writers do...the ability to place the qords in jsut the right order to make the reader feel intense heartbreak and sadness. Insted, this novel is too candyish. The Heaven never really strikes true, and some of the characters are just ghosts, you can never really grasp them in your mind. It doesnt even say much about grief, as i had expected it to. It turns out, basically, to be simply a feel-good (for the most part) novel with a happy ending. More raw emotion is needed...more despair... more needs to be made of the sadness. That would make the book a lot more powerful, and me more inclined to write a glowing review. It's not a bad book...in fact, for the most part its quite enjoyable, but it has such potential to be so much more than it actually is... First 50 pages are great, as are the last 150. The middle is slightly less inspiring.
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: I loved this story! I worried it might be depressing or gruesome, but Sebold wrote it in such a way that it was neither. From the first page I was hooked...I had a hard time putting it down and finished it in less than a week. You grew to love, or hate, or be disgusted with the characters - she truly brought them to life! I would recommend this book to anyone!
Rating: 
Summary: A Sweet Lie
Review: Seibold's novel is sharply written, well-paced, funny and sad... and almost wholly a fantasy. ... At points in this book, this survivor's guilt is nicely captured, especially when the father and the sister are highlighted. And I wish that the family side could have been more fully explored. Instead, the story of a brutal murder is sugar-coated by the narrative conceit of the happy murdered girl skipping through her heaven. And then there's this myth of "closure." I will tell you this from personal experience: There is no closure for the families of the murdered. I kept thinking... what a wasted opportunity. If only the book had been told through a survivor's viewpoint...
Rating:
Summary: quiet, but deep
Review: I didn't expect to like this book, but I got bullied into reading it and, so, okay, it was good. Sebold can write. She can write well enough to make me pretty uncomfortable about how some men treat some women -- except because she's such a good writer, it was about people hurting people, and forgiving people, and coping and getting over it and moving on, not about men and women or adults and children. That's a pretty rare gift. And it wasn't sentimental (okay, maybe a bit, particularly in the second half), and while I didn't totally buy the heaven idea it was well thought out and consistent and didn't offend my intelligence. I'm trying not to sound like I'm giving left handed compliments here, it's just that this book is not my kind of thing, only I liked it. I thought: a book where no one goes anywhere except heaven, how much fun can that be? But it was, in a quiet, deep sort of way. And it felt real. Food for thought.
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