Book #13 - The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I'm actually quite surprised that I never read The Lovely Bones. It's been an extremely popular book for the past few years, and I've always had it on my mental "to read" list. However, I finally was compelled to read it over the holidays.

While visiting my family in northern Virginia after Christmas, my cousins Ashleigh and Allison had a stack of books set aside for me that they thought I should read as part of my 100 book quest. One of them was The Lovely Bones.

I started reading this novel, and was a little surprised at how much information was offered up about Susie Salmon and her murder at the very beginning of the story. Once I continued reading, I understood why. As I'm sure you've seen as part of the film's previews, the story follows 14-year-old Susie while she is in the In Between heaven and earth after her death. Through her narration, we are able to see how her family is coping with the tragedy of her murder.

As the reader, we also gain insight about Susie's murderer and his sordid past and chilling behaviors. We see the quest for justice and vindication for the Salmon family and are kept suspensefully on-edge through the many close encounters of their revelation of the killer.

The Lovely Bones was much, much more than the murder/mystery novel I was expecting. Like I said, it's hard to be a mystery when you know who the killer is from page two. Instead, I was delighted to find a novel full of thoughtfully imaginative narrative that provided hope in a tragic situation. Sebold creates characters that you feel sympathetic toward, but who you also cheer forward as they try to move on with a "normal" life. In my opinion, I would have liked the Salmon family to receive the justice they are so longing for, but as a whole, The Lovely Bones definitely does not disappoint.