Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing Ending
Review: A good enough read, but the ending left (for me) much to be desired. I felt it was sort of a cop out, actually. Know exactly how I would have rewritten it. Still, good to read, and yes, it did grip your attention from the start. Although I wasn't exactly pleased with the ending, I hope there will be more from this author. She has the power and skill to write many a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Almost There
Review: Amazon won't let me give this 3 1/2 stars, which is what I believe it deserves, but since the disappointments came at the end of the story, I'm rounding down to 3. Ms. Sebold has written 80% of a great novel. She lost her way in the ending chapters, however. I can't elaborate much without spoiling things, but suffice it to say that when deus ex machina takes place just in time for the sex scene I rolled my eyes in disgust. Maybe I'm missing the big picture, but when you spend 300+ pages making me sympathize with the protagonist's inability to touch the world she's left against her will, a world she can only observe in sad rememberance, only to craft a contrived return-to-earth-for-that-roll-in-the-hay-with-that-guy-she-had-the-hots-for, I lost all suspense of disbelief. It seemed to me the novel's power came largely from Susie's removal from Earth and her inability to interact with the world she was dragged away from while she watched her family cope with her absence. Allowing her to return, in a scene that would make a B-movie sci-fi movie director blush, to complete her ascent to the plane of Womanhood, was too much for me to take. I closed the book convinced that it was really Susie's sister Lindsey who was the real protagonist here. This is a really the story of a surviving sister's ascent to closure and adulthood in the face of her sister's murder than what I think the author had in mind.
Rating: 
Summary: The Lovely Bones
Review: "So it was that, from heaven, I watched my father build a tent with the man who'd kill me."
Susie Salmon is already in heaven. She was murdered by a neighbor when she was fourteen. Susie thought that everyone saw what she saw, but she learned that heaven is what you want it to be and everyone has a different vision of heaven. While in heaven Susie meets another gilr, Hololy , the end up sharing a duples. Franny who is their intake sounselor, helps them adjust with there new place. As Susie gets settled into her duplex she comes to realize that she will never see her family and that she is gone forever.
Rating: 
Summary: A sad tale well written
Review: I had trouble with this book because of the nature of the story, but I kept right on reading. Well done.
Rating:
Summary: great
Review: I had a hard time putting this one down. This book had my attention from the very first page . I love this book and highly recommend it to any one. It's not everyday you find good reading.
Rating:
Summary: I Love This Book!!!
Review: I was completely psyched to read this book and was not disappointed at all. A girl named Susie is murdered and has to watch her family and friends grieve from heaven.She becomes a very popular person on Earth as well as Heaven. Her family goes through a lot during her murder, and whatever they feel or do, she feels as well. I could not put this book down, and I would read it again in a second. It was humorous, sad, touching, and really gave you an appreciation for your loved ones. It was an outstanding book.
Rating:
Summary: Love it
Review: I loved this book - wonderfully written,
Rating:
Summary: Hi, Mr. Steigleder
Review: The Lovely Bones written by Alice Sebold is told from the perspective of a young girl named Susie Salmon. At the age of only fourteen she was brutally rapped and murdered by a man in her neighborhood. Susie is sharing her story from "her" heaven. Susie can create anything in her desire for her heaven but instead chooses to watch her killer, her parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends. Her deepest wish and desire is to be back on earth with her loved ones. She feels a deep loneliness in heaven, which scares her.
Rating: 
Summary: Honestly I couldnt take this book..
Review: I was so pyched to read The Lovely Bones. But after the first chapter I was bored. I was in love with hearing Susies sadness and humor throughout the book but I was deeply confused. I had to stop reading the book because it got to be too much. I dont want to give away the ending but one word..whoah! I dont really recommend this book to anyone who cant stand blood, horror, and sadness. If you really want to read a book that makes you think and makes you worship your still living The Lovely Bones is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best novels of the 21st century so far
Review: Note: spoilers I have read through this novel more than once, and I can say it grows stronger each time. Millions of copies, a year and a half on the bestseller lists, and almost two thousand Amazon reviews later, The Lovely Bones keeps on going. What is it about this novel that has touched so many of us at this particular point in time? The aftermath of 9/11 has been put forth as one explanation, but while that might get a lot of people to open the book, it didn't get them to finish it. Susie Salmon is but the latest incarnation of a familiar figure in American literature - the youth who never gets sullied by having to grow up, somewhat like Holden Caulfield or Sylvia Plath. The unique twist here is that she gets to watch everyone else grow up and comment on that ... growing up in her own way, as she admits at the end of the book, reaching a final peace with herself on Earth as an absence others must bridge, becoming wise in a way that cannot be measured in years. As the New York Times admitted in its review, most readers would probably pass, sight unseen, on a first novel in which a 14-year-old murder victim watches her family from heaven. But Sebold almost makes it work for the whole 300+ pages. The only part that doesn't is the "Lazarus" scene with Ruth near the end. On its own terms, it works fine, but as even Sebold seems to realize it sort of violates the rules of contact between heaven and earth she's established throughout the novel ... everything else seems plausible, assuming of course that you believe in life after death, but then if the dead can not only briefly return to the world but inhabit the bodies of living in order to fulfill unrealized sexual agendas among other things (and let me say that Susie's decision to do that instead of finger Mr. Harvey and pass on where her body is buried actually does seem understandable), why doesn't this happen more often in the real world? Huh? That said, there's much to admire. It was deft to make this not the story of Susie's life told in flashback from beyond the grave a la Sunset Boulevard, or an accidental removal from life a la Here Comes Mr.Jordan/Heaven Can Wait/that Chris Rock version, but to make Susie's death and ascent to heaven the beginning of the story. I don't find Susie's heaven as insipid as some of the other reviewers seem to; isn't it supposed to be the point that a) it appeals primarily to Susie and b) it's, as in Heaven Can Wait, Defending your Life and other such narratives, but a prelude to the real, wider Heaven that Susie has moved on to at the end of the story? In fact, having grown up in a couple of leafy Northeastern suburbs myself I can say I know exactly where she's coming from. As the radiator woman sang in "Eraserhead," "in heaven, everything's fine ... you get yours and I get mine." The rereadings I mentioned above helped close a couple of plot holes that seem to have boggled other people here: how the police link Mr. Harvey to Susie (the fingerprints on the Coke bottle ... his they could have matched with the ones in the house; hers from her birth certificate). I don't think the police as depicted here were necessarily incompetent, just outfoxed by a serial killer with more practice committing the crimes. It also comes out as you reread just how subtly Sebold charts the changes in Susie, the way her tone moves from impatient teenager to beatific spirit over the course of the narrative, alternating those perspectives constantly as Susie recalls them from her present vantage point somewhere in the blue distance. I like how she creates a sense of omniscience by having Susie often refer in passing to the resolution of certain plot threads that otherwise haven't happened at that point in the story. This could have just been a puerile attempt to work through her rape experience and deal with her very real fear of death during that; instead she actually managed to write a novel that, in the end, works because all of us have someone we remember in our lives who never got to truly live into adulthood and/or maturity, who remains safely forever young, trapped, like the penguin in the epigraph, in a perfect world, beyond the touch of earthly years, and we'd like to know, just once, how they're doing there. Surprising that we haven't heard any word on the movie yet other than that Scotswoman supposedly working on the script. There's a lot here that could make a really great film in this particular genre ... let's hope they don't screw it up.
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