Rating: 
Summary: Disturbing And Emotional!
Review: I found this book to be rather disturbing and emotional to the point that I would put it down only to pick it up again based on the fact that so many of my friends found it a good read. I admit that the idea of a young girl narrating from her idea of what Heaven is was a good one. Watching her family and the trials they go through after her murder was a different way to show us how death effects different people. With that said I must admit that I had a hard time caring how Mom, sister Lindsay, and the rest of the motley crew felt or how the death of susie affected the different characters in the end. Susie's mom was probably the most unlikeable character in my opinion, and I wanted to like her since I am also a mother and could not imagine for one second how I would feel if one of my children was taken from me in such a violent way. The way she just shut down on everyone (including her two other children) and turned to the police detective was in my opinion what turned me off to her.Still I continued to read this book only to be totally let down by the ending. I hope my next read by this author is not such a let down.
Rating: 
Summary: mediocre
Review: I found this novel a bit aggravating...the characters made me very angry. I had heard good reviews but once I read it myself I felt like I was lied to. I found that how she spent her time back on earth awful...this book leads you up to nothing...and what happens to the "bad guy" sucks...some of the plot was good and interesting but other than that it was just o.k...
Rating: 
Summary: Emotionally Gripping
Review: This is a gripping and moving novel that took hold of my emotions, ripped them out of my body and left them dangling in front of me for review. By this I mean, I cried, I had bad dreams, and I experienced pain I hadn't felt in years; pain I thought I had conquered. I lost a loved one years ago. He was not a child. He was not murdered. In fact, he died of natural causes. It was in no way similar to the story of this novel. But, Alice Sebold moved me nonetheless, and in a way no other author has before. Feelings I had not explored in years were brought to surface. Only a powerful book could do that after so many years of careful protection and suppression of these particular emotions. If you have lost a loved one recently, I caution you to approach this book only when you are ready to deal with it. I do not think I could have read this too soon after experiencing the death of someone close to me. That said, this is a beautiful book. Well worth the read. If you are a pragmatist and do not enjoy concepts of the supernatural or spiritual, you may not like this book. However,I still think it is worth a look. You never know which raw nerves may be hit and how you may grow from it.
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.
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