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A review by christineponkey
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
2.0
It took me a while to finish this book. I'm sorry to say that I did not enjoy this book.Now, I'm not a professional book critic or anything like that but I feel obligated to state the reasons why.
The Lovely Bones had a GREAT first chapter. I started the reading the book with great hopes despite the fact that the narrator was a fourteen-year-old girl who was brutally raped before dying. However, over the course of the book, I started to get bored.
I kept forcing myself to read on. Surely something was bound to happen. I can hear all the literary nerds out there. " omg a book is meant to tell a story and express emotion and if you wanted action why dont you read a different book etcetc yada yada yada". What I mean by this is that the book did not have a main plot.
Susie watches over her family from for what, about eight years? I could see most of the plot was centred over catching her murderer, Mr Harvey, but really, that got lost in the random flashbacks, time skips and random moments that really, weren't that relevant to the story. By the end of the novel, Mr Harvey isn't even caught. He just dies in an obscure way with his perverted thoughts and his guilty memories.
Aside from the fact that there wasn't really a definite plot, there was a lot of character development from Susi's family. (Well, what do you expect? You're bound to notice something when you've been watching them for years up in heaven.) Although, Susie was the main protagonist, she didn't really have an active role in most of the story. She mainly existed in people's thoughts, I liked how she was subtly woven into the story.
I didn't enjoy the ending. (I had a whole paragraph written up but it didn't make sense so I'm not going to further explain.)
All in all, I thought this novel deserved 2 stars. It had great character development and a good intro. Maybe I'm too young to understand the depth of this book or feel the 'emotion radiating off of the pages' or something like that but for now, this is what I feel the book deserves. I don't recommend this book to anyone unless you're interested in reading grief stories with no distinguishable plot.
The Lovely Bones had a GREAT first chapter. I started the reading the book with great hopes despite the fact that the narrator was a fourteen-year-old girl who was brutally raped before dying. However, over the course of the book, I started to get bored.
I kept forcing myself to read on. Surely something was bound to happen. I can hear all the literary nerds out there. " omg a book is meant to tell a story and express emotion and if you wanted action why dont you read a different book etcetc yada yada yada". What I mean by this is that the book did not have a main plot.
Susie watches over her family from for what, about eight years? I could see most of the plot was centred over catching her murderer, Mr Harvey, but really, that got lost in the random flashbacks, time skips and random moments that really, weren't that relevant to the story. By the end of the novel, Mr Harvey isn't even caught. He just dies in an obscure way with his perverted thoughts and his guilty memories.
Aside from the fact that there wasn't really a definite plot, there was a lot of character development from Susi's family. (Well, what do you expect? You're bound to notice something when you've been watching them for years up in heaven.) Although, Susie was the main protagonist, she didn't really have an active role in most of the story. She mainly existed in people's thoughts, I liked how she was subtly woven into the story.
I didn't enjoy the ending. (I had a whole paragraph written up but it didn't make sense so I'm not going to further explain.)
All in all, I thought this novel deserved 2 stars. It had great character development and a good intro. Maybe I'm too young to understand the depth of this book or feel the 'emotion radiating off of the pages' or something like that but for now, this is what I feel the book deserves. I don't recommend this book to anyone unless you're interested in reading grief stories with no distinguishable plot.