Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones": A Captivating Story of Grief, Loss, and Hope

laura nestell: Really enjoyed it. It follows the movie very well and keeps you interested all the way through the story. Highly recommend

United States on Dec 13, 2023

Mandy: I discovered this book by seeing the movie first. I loved the movie so much I knew I just had to read the book. I’m not ashamed to say I cried so much in both. Thank you Alice Sebold.

Australia on Dec 05, 2023

Sheri Farrell Casiano: I know that this was a movie a few yrs back. I never seen the movie but saw a tik tok about the author accusing someone of rape and how he was recently released and she made a short statement about how she was sorry. I think he won a large amount of money and lost 16 yrs in prison. Anyways back to this book. I gave it all 5 stars bc I read the whole thing. I didn't read it in one sitting but close enough. I found some parts of the book to be weird. The book made it obvious who the killer was and how he had killed many other people but I don't think he was actually ever really caught. Another very strange part is when the girl switches into her friends body and gets with her crush on earth instead of leading them to where her body was? Idk. Okay maybe it was good how she got to have the experience 🤔 or maybe a little odd bc it was her feiends body. Anyways it was a good book. It shows the girl seeing her family from heaven and it shows how hard her family took the loss of losing her. I am definitely curious to see the movie now and would recommend this book to others.

United States on Nov 25, 2023

C. burke: Fantastic movie watch it so many times

United Kingdom on Nov 17, 2023

Julie Pache: Having suffered the loss of my parents and husband, the thought they are with me still gives comfort. The story had me feeling the pain and emotions of the characters. This book is well worth the read.

United States on Nov 09, 2023

Matt: Delivered very promptly, excellent price

United Kingdom on Oct 29, 2023

HT: I wish that Amazon would let us give one book a year a sixth star to denote how special that book is; this is that book this year, this decade. This book is good, real good, Lonesome Dove good, Terms of Endearment good.

This review has spoilers - don't read the review - just go read the book.

Susie Salmon is, was, a fourteen year old girl who was raped, murdered, and dismembered just before Christmas 1973 - that is not a plot spoiler, it is the first sentence of the book. Susie is telling her story from her heaven - everyone has their own heaven. She tells the story of her murder; she watches her murderer; she watches her family and friends.

This novel is the story of those people she watches and the effect that her death has on others. When someone asks Susie's mother what her daughter's name was she responds "'Susie', my mother said, bracing up under the weight of it a weight that she naively hoped might lighten someday, not knowing that it would only go on to hurt in new and varied ways for the rest of her life." [p 3] We see these changes as they continue to have different effects on everyone she knew. Watching her parents she sees that "[f]or three nights...

United States on Aug 02, 2016

J. M. Austin: I have seen a lot of people both on and off the Internet reading and talking about this book, so when it popped up as the Kindle Daily Deal, it seemed like an opportunity to try it finally for myself. Reading the description, it sounded just the kind of thing I like, about a young girl, brutally raped and murdered, watching over both her family and her killer from her own perspective of heaven, but with a twist, this time she does not intervene in their lives but simply observes, much like the Divine, God whatever you like to call it (so at least I have always thought) observes us. To do anything else would go against the object of this experiment that we call life, for the journey is as always infinitely more important than our destination. So it is with this book, that the message is more important than the messenger.

After she leaves her body, Susie learns that everyone has their own version of heaven - a theme mirrored in many other books I have read. She struggles to accept what has happened to her and so to a large extent clings to the world of the living, observing them from afar as her family and school friends slowly break apart. One of the more interesting...

United Kingdom on Apr 27, 2014

Bex: 'My name was Salmon, like the fish, first name, Susie I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer.'

Every once in a while a story comes along and hooks you right from the first page. I'm one of those people that is constantly searching for that book. With The Lovely Bones, I thought I'd found it.

The greatest thing about this book is that, my God does it make you think. The opening chapters are gruesome, thought-provoking and frankly chilled me so much I started looking at fields in a completely different way searching for little booby traps and doors hidden in there! I'm not mad. Honestly. This will happen to you too.

I really enjoyed The Lovely Bones predominantly for "The Chase". For those of you unfamiliar with Sebold's Lovely Bones, we are dealing with Susie Salmon, a young girl murdered by her neighbour. We watch the murder. We watch the cover-ups. We watch her family and then we follow her family and her murderers journey desperately hoping that they will figure it all out. I loved the chase and was rooting for...

United Kingdom on Jun 23, 2011

J M Alderdice: I live in the UK and received this book as a birthday present from my sister-in-law in Cincinnati. Not one I would have chosen for myself (and indeed it hasn't been released here yet), but having started, I needed to finish. I read it in just over 24hrs - it's easy to read and interesting/challenging/well written enough to have you turning the pages quite quickly. Here comes the 'but'... I felt left unsatisfied, wanting to understand a little bit more from each chapter and character. I can't tell whether the Author deliberately leaves us wondering: because neither Susie, nor her family and friends have all of the pieces to fit together; or whether the author didn't have the imagination to develop the characters further and in their own right. So, it's either a very clever portrayal of how bitty and unresolved our lives can be when such a tragic event takes place, or the Author isn't experienced enough in developing sympathetic and fully rounded characters. I'm inclined to believe the latter since the last few episodes take on an aura of soap-like nonsense - things are resolved - but not quite, and not in the way we'd expect - For example, Susie's occupation of her class-mate's...

United States on Aug 12, 2002