Rating: 
Summary: Undeveloped themes let "Bones" fall flat
Review: I began "reading" The Lovely Bones on audiotape on a long car trip. When I arrived home halfway through the tapes, I actually considered seeking out a bookstore open late at night so I could buy a cloth copy. It is a truly gripping story, and the pace, the sureness, the beauty of the prose, and the deftly drawn characters in the first half were stunning achievements.But the second half of the book did not deliver upon its original promise. A major theme introduced in the first half was the detection and apprehension of the killer, whose identity the reader and Susie's father knew, but the police detective, Len, did not. The tension between Len and Susie's father was left unresolved, and while Len acknowledged his mistake, Susie's father was left viewed as a pathetic nutcase by the police, the town, and his wife. The many near-misses in the search for the killer were titillating but ultimately petered into nothingness, and the danger that Lindsey was in after her courageous act was inexplicably dropped. With that lapse the story's tension dissolved and the novel began to deteriorate into the banal. In the second half of the novel, Sebold focused on the emotional growth and healing of the living and the dead. These, of course, are central to the novel, but without developing and resolving the tensions in the first half, the book's skeleton falls apart. Sebold chose as her climax the satisfaction of one of Susie's unfulfilled dreams on earth. That wish fulfillment, while affecting, seemed less significant to the structure of the novel than the resolution of the father's quest for justice, retribution, and redemption in the eyes of his wife and town. Although this book is well worth reading, it ultimately left me flat and unsatisfied.
Rating: 
Summary: Hooked
Review: This book was awesome! I reccomend it to anyone at all that wants to read a good book, however give yourself a free night because almost everyone I know that has read it finished it in one sitting.
Rating:
Summary: pure emotion
Review: Never have I read a book that touched my heart so softly and ripped it out all at the same time. The downfalls, the trials, the hope, the love...a part near the end where Susie has a dream come true is so beautiful in it's entirety that it brought me to tears. All i can say is that you MUST read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting read
Review: I found this to be well written and I just couldn't put it down. It is an interesting story that encourages the reader to view life from a different angle. The story was a bit upsetting, but I would recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best Books I have EVER Read
Review: hello. i am fifteen years old and i dont know much about life, death, and all that stuff. This book gave me so much insight, its almost overwhelming. I had to share with everyone else the feeling that I got from this book. Like it says in the title, this is one of the best books i have ever read, if not the best. It may be a little mature, but all the same it teaches you a great lesson about life. It is sort of sappy, (i cried eight times) but i feel personally that without the sappyness it wouldnt have been a great book. If you only read one book in your entire life, read this one!
Rating: 
Summary: This novel was not lovely
Review: I am sorry, I really liked this book in the beginning. I found it unique and interesting. Then, about half way through, it was almost as though another author took over and began writing. I lost interest in all of it. Her focus stopped being on the murder and investigation, but on characters, I didn't understand. The ending was disappointing to say the least. This could have been a very good novel, if the author had not lost her writing style and direction, in the middle of it. I wish someone could take the idea, and write a really good novel.
Rating:
Summary: Started well but sadly waned
Review: I bought this book after reading rave reviews in numerous British newspapers. This book is not the sort I would normally go for but I was on the whole pleasantly surprised. The actual rape and murder which spark the subsequent series of events are dealt with briefly and tastefully in the beginning of the book and the description was not prolongued or too graphic, which I was thankful for. The subsequent story is fascinating and Sebold's portrayal of heaven is unique and well described. The explanation of emotions is terrific and the character of Lindsay develops well. Susie seems resigned and somewhat detached in her observations of those she has left behind, I like this as it would be so easy for the book to have been comprised of the murdered girl's frustrated ramblings. Sadly toward the end, Sebold asked the reader to suspend reality further and accept that Susie's wish to relive her first kiss could be physically granted. The story, after going at a leisurely pace, was wrapped up very quickly with a happy ending all round, which somewhat diminished the complete heartbreak still present only a few chapters earlier. Its a shame that the ending was rushed as it detracted from what was otherwise an intelligent and insightful story.
Rating:
Summary: Mediocre and puzzlingly flat
Review: This is one of those books that sounds so promising and exciting. But unfortunately, I didn't buy the story. Any of it. No character struck me as remotely authentic, except Ray Singh's mother, and she was still a flatly-written, cliched character. I didn't believe the dialog between anyone, particularly for the time period in which the novel was set. Everyone was, to me, a "type", and as much as the main character, Susie, was charming in her way, I didn't believe for a second that anyone outside her immediate family would be that affected by her death. It's just not human nature; I'm sorry. I know that 1973 was a more "innocent" time, but there was still enough going on that a girl's murder would not have resonated as Sebold wrote it. And because the story is told in the aftermath, I never got a sense of what was so special about Susie that made everyone fall to pieces. I think the author hit on a clever idea, but I feel like I'm reading her rough draft rather than the thoughtful, exploratory study of human nature that this book could have been.
Rating:
Summary: I loved it!
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I was never bored reading it and Seybold's writing style is lovely. I found all of the characters interesting and did not find that it was a "feel good" disappointment as it says in some of the other reviews. Since the story is told from the point of view of the victim - a 14 yr old girl - I found the style appropriate. If you are looking for all of life's questions about death, heaven, justice and grief to be answered in this book, you will be disappointed, but if you take it at face value, you will enjoy it. I do wish a couple items at the end were different, such as what happens to the killer and to her body, but I think the message is - life doesn't always turn out the way we wish it would. Overall, I loved this book and found it very touching and sweet.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore the hype, enjoy the book
Review: The Lovely Bones falls into the rare category of novels that are still in hardback, still high on the NY Times Bestseller list after an entire year, and compelling enough that I'm writing a review of it six months after I read it. The formula is simple: It's a gimmick (girl narrating from beyond the grave) attached to a decent novel. It's not the next To Kill a Mockingbird, it's not going to be on high school reading lists twenty years from now, and if you're expecting that I think you're setting yourself up for disappointment. I think it would appeal to people who read Danielle Steele or James Patterson and want something a tad more literary; and to those who read John Irving or Joyce Carol Oates who want a good, quick beach novel; it's not going to appeal to people who prefer Joyce or Hegel or Baudelaire, to men whose wives force them to read it, or to people who expect that it's going to change their lives. To me it holds a certain sentimentality because Sebold really marvelously captures the heart of a suburban teenage girl, and I think anyone who ever was one will especially love it. Looking back at other reviews, some of the sentences *were* clunky, but I guess I was too caught up in the story to notice. And the supernatural scene that occurs at the end is wacky, but I loved it. So suspend disbelief and just *enjoy* it - and I guarantee you'll be glad you read it.
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