Finished

"The Lovely Bones"


If you want a book that ends with no conclusion but a mildly happy ending, then this is your book. It isn't that there is no ending, it is more that you're left with more questions than you have answers. I mean, hell, this girl is murdered, and then she falls back to earth and into the body of the girl her soul brushed on it's way from her body? WTF? It went from more of a normal story to infinity and beyond so to speak. I enjoyed the writing style, but found myself distracted and ready to skip through inconsequential paragraphs to get to the next page. If that makes sense. I'm not so sure I love this book, but it is an interesting take on something I hadn't thought much about. I do like that the whole idea is based around this girl trying to find herself in heaven. The theme pops out a little before half way, "the dead have to let go of the living before the living can move on."
I wish the author had written more about the perspective of the small younger brother of the murdered girl. I mean, the view of a child is much more interesting in a story like this. I felt this book was missing something. It was missing real details about some of the more major characters. The whole idea of some of the things which happen are...odd. A mother just up and leaves her 4 year old and her older daughter? Really. She completely leaves, drives across the country, and works at a winery. We don't get into her perspective -- we just treat her as the villain for leaving, and that isn't what she was.
I feel like this could have been better explained. We never really get Suzie's perspective of heaven, and the mystery of her death is never really resolved... I felt like there was so much more which should have happened.

Overall the book gets a C- from me. There was much more this could have done, and though it made me think a lot, I don't necessarily love the way it was written and the way it ended. It was a good idea but not as well produced as it could have been.

That is it on this one. Coming soon -- a list of books I have sitting on my desk ready to be read...and much more.

~M