The Lovely Bones

Rating:
Summary: Does life really end with death?
Review: Not often do I pick up a book and say, "Wow, I've never read anything like this." Alice Seabold gives us a piece of literature that blossoms like a summer rose. It buds. The fragrance of her words permeate each page. As you move from chapter to chapter the story blooms. I'm reminded of Our Town and To Kill and Mockingbird. The Lovely Bones will become a classic.

Rating:
Summary: A Tender and Beautiful Book
Review: With the storyline of a girl being brutally murdered, one would think that this would be a depressing and sad book. It is anything but. A tender and poignant tale, Susie watches her family struggling to move on with their lives after her death. Told with the sweet innocence of a 14 year old girl, it is one of the most touching, moving and incredible books I have read in a very long time. Simply put, an absolutely wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Refreshing
Review: What a pleasure it is to actually have to pry myself away from a novel. This is one of the best novels I have read this year and would highly recommend it to any reader. While the premise initally appeared a bit morbid, the story is one of honest inflection and tremendous growth. I think every person could gain a little insight from this 14 year old girl.

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as I'd hoped, not as bad as I'd feared
Review: Newspaper and magazine reviewers do no one a favor when they over-hype a small book like this one. This novel is okay, but I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I'd known less about it and hadn't been primed for some sort of major literary miracle.

Rating:
Summary: Exquisite
Review: I am a writer and avid reader who found The Lovely Bones to be one of the most exquisitely rendered stories that I've ever read. This is a riveting, up-all-night book with characters who grow and mature and live and die in heartbreakingly real and beautiful ways. I can not give Alice Sebold's first novel high enough praise.

Rating:
Summary: Awestruck!
Review: This is one of the best novels I've ever felt. That's right...FELT. You can't just read this book - you live it, experience it, and you feel it as the story unfolds. I love it when this happens...when a story just peels off the pages and becomes less of a story, and more of a dream.
I read the first two chapters online ... and couldn't wait to get my copy of it. Those who say it doesn't "live up to the hype" should stop paying attention TO hype, and trust the story for what it is. Beautiful and haunting. Comforting and unsettling. Impossible and truthful. The ending does not fold up "neatly" ...
Read it for yourself and see.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good but not Great
Review: Alice Sebold has written an interesting and readable first novel with a very unusual view of life after death. Susie Salmon and her sister Lindsay are very memorable characters and her parents sympathetic. However, it was not the GREAT read the pre-release publicity led me to expect only a very good light read that made me think.

Rating:
Summary: Great First Novel
Review: I read this book in two days. It was great. I couldn't put it down. There were some parts in the middle I felt that dragged a little. But you wanted to continue reading to find out what happens next. What I most got out of the book, that we are not alone, that our dead loved ones talk to us all the time......we just need to listen. This book was a little bit of a mystery too. Who was the killer going to kill next? The story talks about how everyone deals with Susie's death. And Susie sits up in heaven looking down on Earth at everthing that is going on with her friends and family. The ending was the best part of the book. And with that I'll leave you to run out and get your own copy to read. I can't wait to see what Alice Sebold comes up with next. Great reading.....

Rating:
Summary: A lovely little book
Review: I abandoned a week-end to this book and didn't care because it is a voluptuously good read. Several passages in this were so startlingly beautiful that I had to put the book down for a moment to absorb them. The protagonist and narrator, a fourteen-year-old girl from a nice family, is savagely killed by a neighbor and goes to heaven. She describes her soul "shrieking from earth" in the violence of the act, adding that violent circumstances make the victim reach for death as one would a rope to swing out from danger. Just gorgeous stuff like that. I know these characters, this family. They are like my own and many other girls'. She wathches as her death transforms them all and she has such a beautiful young soul!! I recommend this book without reservation to anyone who enjoys a good read. Unique, charming, wistfully sad and never maudlin, sometimes funny (the tippling grandmother is a hoot).

Rating:
Summary: The Lovely Bones
Review: This book is incredible. I enjoyed it greatly. This is definently one of my favorite books. I couldn't put it down. You're thrown into someone elses mind, becoming wildly entertained, interested, and on the edge of your seat. The book is intense and the writing style unique. THis book reaches many different people on different levels. I highly recommend reading it.