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The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones

by Alice Sebold
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • Readers' Rating (116):
  • First Published:
  • Jun 1, 2002, 288 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Apr 2004, 352 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Reviews

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There are currently 118 reader reviews for The Lovely Bones
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Emma

Great book
Unsuitable for a young audience, but is a great book with an amazing structure and storyline.
raelee ash

lovely bones
This is an amazing book, and teaches you not to trust mean people and what to look out for.
Gabbie_Ruth99

My Point!!!
I never read the book but from everything I have heard about the book and reading the summary it interest me a lot. I never imagined reading a summary and relating so much to it without even reading the book myself. I hope to finally read the book because it sounds so relatable and interesting.
Amanda Rodriguez

The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold’s first novel, The Lovely Bones, is a thrilling yet emotionally sentimental fiction story. The story opens with the voice of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon who tells of her rape and murder by her neighbor. The major thriller of the novel is knowing who has murdered Susie when everyone else does not. Alice Sebold does an outstanding job keeping her readers wanting more.

The book comes alive to the readers, keeping them forever interested. We get to see the point-of-view from the victim herself. We see Susie’s heaven and we follow her as she watches her family cope with her death. Sebold intrigues the readers to want to help the family find out who the killer was, because we know it was Mr. Harvey. These are just a few examples as to how Sebold puts extraordinary effort into her details.

Alice Sebold can relate to the book from a personal stand point. Sebold is a survivor of rape. Readers can almost visualize the murder scene due to the excellent expression and detail Sebold is able to share from her experience. The author writes: “As he kissed his wet lips down my face and neck and then began to shove his hand up my skirt, I wept.” From details such as that we are able to feel both Alice Sebold and Susie Salmon’s pain during their tragic moments.

Along with great detail, the author is able to keep a general audience at all times with appropriate language and wording throughout the novel. This allows readers to be able to continue reading without having to stop and question themselves, this is a very important detail when writing a book. Alice jumps from Heaven with Susie to Susie’s family on Earth. She uses transaction sentences to keep her readers allows following along for example: “My favorite part was how colored blocks were turquoise and orange, just like the blocks in Fairfax High.” Sebold uses transactions like this to keep her audience bouncing back and forth with the flow of the story. We are able to feel the grief of the Salmon family through Susie’s views from her Heaven.

In Conclusion, The Lovely Bones is an intriguing and heart filled novel. The author does an outstanding job on her first premier novel. Sebold makes the book come to life for her readers and keeps them interested. The author’s tragic rape incident in her own personal life left her with the ability to write such a detailed story of a young girl’s murder. Sebold is also able to stick to a general audience by using appropriate word choice and language. The author leaves her readers with sympathy in their hearts for the Salmon family, giving The Lovely Bones the title of a phenomenal best seller.
Reader

" The Lovely Bones" review
The book " The Lovely Bones" is a great book for anyone who likes to read suspense novels and that enjoy types of novels with tragic happenings. I'm not quite done with the " The Lovely Bones", but I can say that it is a great book as far as I'm concerned. You will cry at this novel for two reasons the tragedy and the joy of this book.
Karen Trevino

Great Book
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.
Arii

Lovely Book
I greatly enjoyed reading Alice Sebold's novel. It was a suspenseful book that was hard to put down but easy to get into. I recommend this!
TEEJAY

COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN!
This book is a great read and a disappointing one as well. I so wanted the perverted killer to experience some vigilante justice...[spoiler removed]. The author's vision of heaven is interesting and makes you think that dying isn't all that bad if that sort of heaven does truly exist? (Dont really want to find out anytime soon lol!). If you like this book I would suggest another good read. (WHERE SERPENTS LIE) both of these books remind us of the sick perverted world that we now live in and how our kids are truly never safe. I sure am glad my kids are grown, not looking forward to grandchildren to worry about!!

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