The Killer to be Found | The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold



Title: The Lovely Bones
By: Alice Sebold
Genre: Crime
Pages: 352
Release Date: August 7th, 2010
Publisher: Brown and Company

Summary from Goodreads: The Lovely Bones is the story of a family devastated by a gruesome murder -- a murder recounted by the teenage victim. Upsetting, you say? Remarkably, first-time novelist Alice Sebold takes this difficult material and delivers a compelling and accomplished exploration of a fractured family's need for peace and closure.

The details of the crime are laid out in the first few pages: from her vantage point in heaven, Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by the murderer one December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family does not. Anxiously, we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family, desperate for the killer to be found and punished.

Sebold creates a heaven that's calm and comforting, a place whose residents can have whatever they enjoyed when they were alive -- and then some. But Susie isn't ready to release her hold on life just yet, and she intensely watches her family and friends as they struggle to cope with a reality in which she is no longer a part. To her great credit, Sebold has shaped one of the most loving and sympathetic fathers in contemporary literature.


Review: Here it is. The review I promised you.

A strange telling of death and the afterlife, one that I wasn't too thrilled to finish. The first 50% of the book was an enthralling crime story. Who killed Susie Salmon? How will the family cope with the death of their child? Can the second Salmon sister escape from the killer? Its intense and exciting. 

The story was so short, the author added a "What happened after" to the story and it was dull and boring to me. Frankly, I put the book down around 80% because I had lost interest. To tell you the truth, the movie was much better, which I watched right away. 

Still, if you only take the story into consideration, and not the after show, I really enjoyed the book. Four stars for The Lovely Bones.




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