Rating: 
Summary: The Lovely Bones
Review: Never read anything quite like this -- it is definitely an original. Very poignant, disturbing, yet hopeful in the passages about heaven -- great beauty here. Makes one appreciate life while we are living it (not an easy task). Very unique.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing
Review: This book is truely amazing. I could not put it down!! I just finished it and can't get over how wonderful a story it was. Alice Sebold has written a book that will surely become a classic.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth reading, not worth a penny
Review: There is nothing inspiring, nothing learned from reading this book. The book does not make sense and it is very hard to read. It seems that Susie never actually died, she never left earth. In buying this book, I thougth there was a chance to learn something from the heaven perspective but the author was just to earthly, into the emotions and the sex ...
I was very, very disappointed. I am surprised that other readers gave this book even two stars.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent.
Review: Stunning book. I experienced a wide range of emotions while reading it. I envy those who still get to experience it for the first time.
Rating:
Summary: Riveting!
Review: I really enjoyed this book and I tend to be a bit picky. All the characters are well written and the story is very original. I couldn't put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: Wandering among the heavens in want of an editor...
Review: The book starts out as a page turner with a clever twist -- the narrator is a murdered teenager. We know who the serial killer is and we see the threads of his downfall begin to weave themselves together as her family unravels in their grief. The early writing is tight and moving. Her imaginative depiction of Susan's multi-faceted Heaven is wonderful. A scene where the narrator meets her sister victims is extremely affecting. There is even a positively portrayed lesbian character. Things are ticking right along when about halfway through the book, the story just goes wandering off into the mists of who knows where, detailing the lives of secondary characters in ways that sidetrack the story and cause it to lose not only its momentum, but also its seeming original premise. It felt as if the writer became bored with her original plans and just went off in another direction. What might be good character exploration done on the side as a research tool to help her write a better story becomes substituted for the story itself. Her mother, precipitated by tragedy out of a marriage she resents, has a very brief and seemingly pointless affair with the detective, who begins as someone important to the plot then simply fades away. Finally, after a series of unlikely and unrelated fantasies (shades of Being John Malkovich!), it just ends. Plop. I found myself correcting her grammar -- mixed verb tenses, misused words like "muscle" when she must have meant "mussel..." Nothing spoils a story like finding yourself mentally editing as you read it. If it's well constructed, you probably won't notice the errors...or care.
With some solid editorial guidance, this could have been a really good book.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth it.
Review: I am usually so skeptical of hype. But, like Zadie Smith's White Teeth, sometimes the hype surrounding a bestseller is warranted, as it is with this novel. Alice Sebold so believably inhabits the voice of her 14-year-old narrator, that you can't help but be caught up in the stories she tells you. This is a book that has much broad appeal: it's a family drama, a coming-of-age novel and a mystery. Sebold writes with a graceful hand, and avoids the cliches you think she's going to walk right into. She's filled this book with so many well-developed secondary characters and she paces it really well, so it's quite compelling to follow all these lives through several years.
I was so satisfied that the hype wasn't unfounded; I really loved this book.
Rating:
Summary: Where are the Lovely Bones?
Review: Very good until the ending. I wish I had stopped reading before the last 2 chapters. However, I guess life is not always tied up nicely in little bows.
Rating:
Summary: The Lovely Bones
Review: This was a great book. I really liked it, and I'm really picky about books. I will
give out one warning. This book is for people who do not get sick really easy.
It's not ALL gruesome, but just a little bit is. This book goes along great with
what's going on in our world today with all the kidnappings and killings of young
girls.
My favorite character was Lindsey Salmon, Susie Salmon's little sister. I
loved the part about where she went into Mr. Harvey's house and she took thedrawing he made of the dug-out.
Anyone with a TV sees all the young girls being kidnapped and then
being found later, dead in the middle of nowhere. It makes me think as a
teenage girl, "Hey, this could happen to me."
Rating: 
Summary: Good story and unique narrator, but......
Review: The story becomes weak when Susie is temporarily reincarnated in Ruth's body for a sexual rendez-vous with an old beau. Prior to this, it was made clear that the deceased in heaven can not influence people or events or intervene on earth, despite what may be their wish to do so. What was the point of this inconsistency in the plot? Susie tries to give the reader a feel for "my heaven." Some of her heavenly companions are described, but there is never any mention of God in heaven. A real deficiency in credibility, it seems to me.
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