Rating: 
Summary: Lovely Bones
Review: The Lovely Bones is an excellent book by Alice Sebold. The book tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl already in heaven as she recounts the details of her gruesome murder. It also tells a sad, yet comforting story of a family trying to cope with the loss of a daughter and sister. Being a fourteen-year-old girl, she does not want her family to forget about her, and wants badly to have them live with her in heaven. Just as her family and friends have to live life without her, Susie has to learn to "live life" in heaven without them.
Rating: 
Summary: The Lovely Bones
Review: "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6,1973..."We first meet Susie Salmon as she looks down at life on earth from her own heaven, a heaven where she can get anything she thinks about and desires, except to be back with the ones she loves most-her mom, dad, younger siblings and beloved dog. While walking home, one snowy day after school, Susie encounters a neighborhood friend, or so she thought. This "friend", Mr. Harvey, took Susie to a secret hideout where he later brutally raped and murdered her. As she watches from heaven her mother loses hope and gets envolved in a new relationship to try and dull the pain from losing a child. Her father wont give up on finding the murderer and becomes obsessive with the whole thing. This tears their marriage apart.While all this is happening Susie also watches kids at her school gossip about where she disappeared to. She watches her murderer run and cover his tracks and looks after her younger sister and brother who seem to be having trouble defining "gone". This is a great book that deals with grief, understanding, hope, and adjusting. I can relate to this book and I think anyone that has lost a loved one before could also relate, not only to the grieving family but also to an adjusting Susie. This book is unique because it takes you through the "afterlife" of a teenage girl and you hear the thoughts she has.I recommend this book to those that are mature, it has very disturbing scenes throughout it, and it was hard to read it without feeling sad or disgusted. On the other hand, it changed the way I look at things a bit. I realized that some things happen that are out of our control, and also that we should live our dreams not sit back and watch others live them. I think that this was the authors purpose in writing this sad but eyeopening novel, and she did it in an exciting way.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: For the most part, my short list of recommendations of new literature is rather predictable: "My Fractured Life," "Secret Life of Bees," "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" but the one outsider to the list is "The Lovely Bones." This is an amazingly captivating novel told from a totally unique prospective - a girl who was brutally murdered. It fully deserves its recommendation among the other outstanding novels.
Rating:
Summary: Enormous comfort
Review: Reading this incredibly deft and redemptive novel was cathartic. The characters are so endearingly human and knowable. It is reassuring to travel with young Susie as she comes to understand how and why life goes on. Read it NOW.
Rating:
Summary: A Rare Gem...
Review: This is one of those rare gems. I wished it would never end. It was so easy to lose myself in the depth of the characters. And they lingered with me long after I finished reading it. I can think of words like meloncholly, beautiful, gut-wrenching, horrific, touching, but these words are really inadequate to describe the experience that you'll have when reading this book. I agreed with most people, read this one!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Page Turner
Review: Lonely Bones was one of the most interesting page turners I have read in a while. After reading the first sentence it was hard to put it down. This is a great novel to see an opinion of what Heaven is truly like.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful to the very end
Review: This book touched me so much. I loved the perspecitve and the writing style Sebold used, it was absolutely amazing. However, the end of the book did not thrill me as much as I had anticipated. The whole body switch was too out there for me, as well as the very ending (I won't give it away for those who haven't read it). But, I would recommend this book in a heart beat, just don't be looking forward to an overly happy ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Now I remember . . .
Review: I finally broke down and read this book because of all the buzz it generated - after all, "Cold Mountain" generated a lot of buzz, and it was an excellent book. Unfortunately, this book reminded me of why I shy away from books on the best seller lists: They're usually pap. I think I'll go back to avoiding the best seller lists.
Rating:
Summary: Heaven is in the Eye of the Beholder
Review: "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." So begins Susie's story as she narrates it from her vantage point in heaven and charts the progress of those left behind as they go about the sad task of coping with her brutal murder. It's basically a mystery but it's not the usual whodunnit kind of mystery as we meet her killer early on. Susie's heaven doesn't have angels strumming harps, wispy clouds or St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, however it does have an intake counselor. Susie has her own personal heaven as does everybody else. Susie's heaven looks a lot like her school playground. When Susie had been killed she been in the ninth grade, dreaming of high school. She'd left her thirteen-year-old sister Lindsey behind, along with her four-year-old brother Buckley. She experiences high school as she watches Lindsey grow and she sees Buckley struggle to remember the sister he'd lost. There are plenty of tender moments in this story, tenderly told, however the real story is about how her murder changed the lives of those still living. Susie's mother leaves the family and finds solace with other men, Lindsey refuses to acknowledge the reality of what's happened to keep herself from falling apart and her father becomes obsessed with finding her killer. From my brief description above you might think this would be a difficult book to get through, but it's not. Alice Sebold's brilliant writing holds you captive to her story, making you almost a part of Susie's family as they seek resolution to the horrible tragedy that has affected them all. And I can guarantee you, that if you haven't thought much about an afterlife lately, you will by the time you finish this beautiful story.
Rating: 
Summary: A good read, but not great
Review: The first few chapters were riveting, but the remainder of the book was disappointing. I was looking for closure for the family. When Susie had the opportunity to return to earth and provide that closure, she choose instead to kill her murderer and have sex with her childhood boyfriend. Odd way to end things.
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