The “Lovely Bones”, written by Alice Sebold, is a book about how difficult it was for a family to cope with the loss of a child due to a violent crime. Susie Salmon was a 14- year-old girl who was raped and killed by her neighbor, a serial killer of young girls, who moves from town to town after each of his crimes. Susie ascends to heaven where she struggles to accept her death while she is still clinging on to the life that she had on earth by following her family’s dramas over the years. She watches and comments how her family and close ones are affected by her death, and how they are moving on with their lives and her death.

The first part of the book had more of a mysterious tone to it. Susie’s dad knows that their creepy neighbor, Mr. Harvey killed his daughter, but he doesn’t have proof to prove to the police that he did it. Meanwhile, Susie is living in her perfect heaven, playing on swings and hanging out with a little girl named Holly.

The second half of this book becomes more of a pure ghost story, where Susie watches all her loved ones grow older and she observes the different turns and paths that they take in their life.

Alice Sebold does a marvelous job of writing a story that is both tragic and full of much light and grace but also full of suspense and delight. She shows how a tragedy can truly tear a family apart, but also brings them back together again. Alice really captured both the ordinary little ideas and the extraordinary, horrific scenes that happened throughout the book.

Some of the weaknesses that I noticed that book had was how it sometimes got really confusing to understand what they were talking about because you didn’t know if it was present tense or past tense, since the book moves back and forward the whole time. Another weakness that I saw was how the author tries to make things more than they need to be. Sehold goes far in depth to describe something when it really doesn’t have to be described in depth. Overall the strengths outweigh the weaknesses, because the Lovely Bones was such a beautiful and touching book even though it was a really sad. This book teaches how usually people can overcome anything, even though it does not happen easily or even the way we might expect it. I really recommend this book to anyone because it is such a unique and meaningful book.