What readers think of The Lovely Bones, plus links to write your own review.

Everyone knows someone who has had a child that has been killed, either by a childhood disease or by tragic circumstances, as in The Lovely Bones. We can only imagine what the parents, siblings, loved ones and the community do to cope with the loss. By reading this book, one gets a painful insight into what that loss must be like. The devastation that the parents feel is palpable....I have a young child of Susie's age and it is incomprehensible that I could go on living, obsessing about what kind of terror and pain that she would be feeling at the time of abduction. The parents' imaginings of how Susie met her end is, in this case, as bad as they think it is.

I loved the fact that it was narrated by Susie herself and as I went through the book, I held out a hope that this is how heaven could be...passed on relatives watching from above, intervening when necessary (like in Buckley's garden), showing themselves when they think it would help (like when Susie's reflection was caught up in the broken glass of a ship in her father's study when he had his breakdown).

I listened to the book on tape and it included a fairly in-depth interview with Anne Sebold herself and when you know her personal story (raped, as a virgin, when she was 18), you get an insight into why this is such a dark book.

This book will be with me for awhile and I look forward to her next project.

this book is so good it should be bought by everyone. if you have not read this book yet then you need to.

If things get too hyped they never live up to expectations.


This book suprised me because it's a 'tweener for me. I am waiting for another book and this is the one I picked up in the interm.

I laughed, I cried...and it's a different writing perspective than normal.

How many of us have heard, seen or read stories of teenagers that get killed??? But, when you get a perspective from the person who is killed it changes the perspective you read from.

Great read.

Although I enjoyed this book, the hype to read it was overwhelming. I thought the book was definately OVERRATED!!! --> Keep your expectations low and you will have a better experience.

I was recommended this book by a friend. I rarely read fiction, choosing to allocate my precious reading time to biographies.

But I was drawn in by the back cover, opened the book and found myself in a different world - Susie's world. I found this book hauntingly beautiful, even now, writing about it I can feel the emotion bubbling up. Such a poignant subject and written with such love.

I felt considerable affection for Susie. I felt I could slip into her skin and feel her hurt and pain. This book brought tears to my eyes on three or four occasions. There were heart stopping moments too....

I did struggle however with one aspect, where Susie "visits" earth again somewhere near the end, but all in all this book affected me in a way no other book has done.

I'm 44, I've read a fair few books, but I think this is the one I shall remember more than any. Its an experience, pure and simple.

When i was reading this book i couldn't put it down

im only 17, and i dont really like to read books... but with lovely bones i was into it.
the idea of using both world (heaven and earth) is really great! and when you already know what Alice Sebold suffered in her life and that the woman befor actually had been raper dimemberise (maybe the idea of the death of Susie, the main charactere), you think its amazing how she wrote about it.
i really enjoyed reading this book.
what i like the most to, is how the charactere of every sincle person in the book is discribe in details from kids to adults and adults in the real life and problems. Alice Sebold is showing how parents could react infront of this horrible act, that is rape and losing a child... how its hard to have hope when you know your child wont come back for ever.
its really well written and also got deep images between each line of the novel.
great jobs...

I gave up a whole Saturday to read The Lovely Bones and felt cheated and short changed at the end of the day. I am talking about the "cranked out" ending of the novel. I felt like it was tacked on to the end because the author couldn't pull it together any other way. However, I thought there were many other ways it could have ended than the unsatifactory way it did. The novel also took on the tiresome spin of feminisn--the mother who had to go find out who she really was--and desert her family. Haven't we read this character many times before in the last 20 years. It reminded me of the unsympathetic main character in The Deep End of the Ocean. Aren't there any mother characters in novels these days who do the hard work of staying in a painful situation because that's what the family needs.