Rating: 
Summary: Lovely Bones is a lovely and disturbing read...
Review: One of the few books that is deserving of its popularity, Lovely Bones has an opaque quality about it that is truly haunting. It is an absorbing book worth the time spent to turn the pages.A girl is the victim of a violent and tragic death and she watches from heaven the earth she left behind.
Rating: 
Summary: Unique, yet somehow average
Review: I completely agree that this is not a "feel good" book, and I disagree that this represents a typical teenager. My best friend died when I was thirteen and I did not relate to any of the situations that took place in the book. This book seems as a complete misrepresentation of youth and death. The supernatural part of the book was original, yet completely dark and depressing. I would not recommend this book.
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Summary: This is a best-seller?
Review: I've heard this book mentioned a lot in press and conversation and everything I'd heard about it was good. The concept of a murdered girl watching her family on earth deal with her death intrigued me. When I finally got to reading it, it was an incredible disappointment. The writer handles death by skipping lightly from subject to subject, going off on tangents in the form of flashbacks as events in the grieving family's life reminds the dead narration character of something from her childhood.
Susie Salmon, the narrator, is murdered by a neighborhood serial killer, and that's where her story begins. The book starts off well enough, with realistic reactions of friends and family. The characters are depicted in varying degrees of detail. Those characters outside the immediate family are largely variations on stock characters, such as the grizzled veteran cop, the playgirl grandma, even the reclusive serial killer. In life, misfit Ruth barely knew the girl, but becomes Susie's best friend after death, which I found a bit odd. The fact that Susie's mother is developed as a character only by minor hints and glances is probably the most artful thing the writer attempted to do in this short novel, and a good effort, but in the end, we still don't know her as well as we ought to. Susie's father is the most graphic representation of grief as he holds on to Susie's memory long after everyone else has moved on. The characters in what Susie calls "my Heaven" are barely described at all. But details that seem meaningful are handed out, such as Holly, her roommate, taking her name from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" - we're never told why or what her real name was.
The flow of time is difficult to follow in this novel, because while Susie is observing life on earth after her death, she frequently gets sidetracked in flashbacks of her early childhood. While this could be a constructive method of telling her life story in a series of flashbacks, they are instead delivered in no particular order and with no unifying theme. The only thing they all have in common is the saccharine-sweet heart-yank that comes from a kid story. Perhaps this is how the author wished to show sentimentality, but all it left me with was a brief description of a family photo album. These scenes went by too fast and randomly for the reader to get attached to any of them. In non-flashback flow, the author lingers too long in the immediate aftermath of Susie's murder. It seems we're shown every day until a certain point, and then we're rushed about 10 years down the road.
The Deus Ex Machina ending for the killer was a bit of a laugh. The plotline was given all along of the tightrope he walked between discovery and concealment. After all the near misses and the evidence being grabbed by Lindsey, all of it came to nothing as the other characters kept just missing him, and none of it was ever resolved. I realize that a major theme of the book was that evil isn't always punished, but in such a case, why let the reader know who did it? Why construe events so that everyone but the cops know who did it? The recurrence of the killer as a character allowed some building of suspense, but with no payoff, the suspense is wasted.
Oh, and the bit about the elbow. Her chopped her up and put her in a bag. But a neighborhood dog found Susie's elbow. I'm wondering how he chopped her so that there was an ELBOW just ready to drop off the bag. Was it a flap of skin from her elbow? The lower part of the humerus with the upper parts of the ulna and radius attached? Why would he make that a separate part? And say it out loud. Elbow. There's something intrinsically silly about it. How are we supposed to feel any of the gravity of the situation when the dog finds an ELBOW? Another thing that rang false was that after so many times Susie tried to contact the world of the living, she is through some unexplained means able to take over the body of her friend-after-death Ruth. And rather than call the police, and tell them where her body is, tell them the story of the murder, she just uses this opportunity to have sex, and nothing more.
Though this isn't truly awful, I can't understand what makes it a bestseller. The writing is mediocre, the story is sappy and too sugar-sweet to be belived at times. In the end, I felt that the book could have been good, and parts of it were fairly decent. But what could have been an interesting study in grief and resolution ended up being a cursory flight down memory lane.
Rating:
Summary: Deus Ex Machina !
Review: I think Alice Sebold's editors should grant her take-backs on the ending before the softcover version comes out. I'd love to see how she would re-write the ending now - without a Deus Ex Machina. You go girl.
Rating: 
Summary: Instant Classic
Review: I would some times wonder what it would be like to have read 'Huck Fin' or anything by Shakespeare or Hemingway when the writings were new, or what it would have been like to listen to a Stones or Beatles song, and they were yet to be hailed as classics......well, now I know. As I read The Lovely Bones, I couldn't help but feel very 'Lucky'. Sorry....but seriously.... This is an amazing book that promises you a story about a girl's point of view from beyond the grave and delivers a complete view point on a young girl's world. Try to remember how it felt when you were a teen ager and your neighborhood and every one in it was the 'entire world'. This book captures the world view of some one who is not complete, and will never get the chance to grow old. A true gift. I still don't know how the author pulled this off. Hats off! PS-Start reading this book on a weekend, or when you have a couple days off, or you will be fired, because you will call out from work, you will skip eating, and you will push everything aside until you are done with this book. I called out sick. Put a day or two aside and start reading!
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Summary: Haunting
Review: This is one of my favorite books of all times! From the first moment I picked the book up, I couldn't put it down...it took command of me immediately and didn't let go even after reading the last page. Alice Sebold is an incredible author. I bought this book because I thought the plot sounded absolutely preposterous. I'm glad my curiosity got the better of me! This tale is poignant, insightful, beyond emotional. If you read any book this year, this should be the one!
Rating:
Summary: Expect the unexpected
Review: No review that I have yet read truly encompasses the power of this novel. Reading the dust jacket actually made me put this aside for a while, but the first chapter pulled me firmly into the story. This is an amazingly well-written work, enjoyable to the last page.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not for gift giving
Review: I was profoundly depressed and disturbed by this book from beginning to end. It definitely is not a "feel good" nor gift type book. The author's concept of Heaven I also found a little strange; however, I gave it 3 stars for originality and uniqueness, but it is not a book I recommend to my reading friends.
Rating:
Summary: Great Begining
Review: The begining is written excellently. You find yourself feeling the pain of the Salmon family as Susie watches from above. However, there was too much drifting with Susie's memories. At some points I couldn't tell where they were at (by time). It is an easy and quick read, and most likely will bring tears to your eyes.
Rating:
Summary: Didn't live up to my expectations
Review: I bought this book based on reviews from friends and from magazine reviews that all said it was great. I liked the general idea of the story, that Susie is murdered and looks on from heaven, but found the rest of the story to be forced. That Ray still lusts for Susie after one kiss when they are 13 is unrealistic. I would have liked for there to be more about what Susie's heaven was like and to have understood more about the emotions that the mom went through. Overall, this book ws a big disappointement. I'm afraid that everyone is reading it and making it more popular based off of hype rather than real quality.
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