Read what people think about The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, and write your own review.

Rated of 5

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.

Rated of 5

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.