I have finished The Lovely Bones and I loved it. It is the perfect mixture of everything you could possibly want in a book. It has a bit of romance, a bit of death (obviously), a tiny bit of mystery (Susie’s family trying to figure out the murder), a bit of comedy, a bit of horror (the description of Susie’s murder is a bit horrific, at least to me), a bit of religion (heaven, obviously), and even a bit of magic (I kinda considered Susie doing things on Earth magic, but others may disagree). All in all, I think anyone could pick up this book and find something they like in it. And you know it’s a good book, when that happens.
One of the main things that I liked about this book was the character development. Like I’ve said before (at least, I think I have….maybe not) it’s the characters that make the book. Without good, rounded characters, the book will be absolutely boring and predictable. I imagine it this way. People read books because they want to be entertained, because they want an adventure. They don’t want to be able to predict everything that will happen next. What would be the fun in that? Books that are less predictable are more fun to read. And books that are less predictable have more rounded characters, making them more realistic and believable. If you examine books in general, they are all grounded in some sort of reality, even fantasy and science fiction books. If an author creates something that is totally and completely unbelievable, fewer people are likely to read their books. People like to have books grounded in reality, because that way they can imagine that the things that happen in books can actually happen in real life. Face it, everyone would like a fairy tale ending. But fairy tale endings rarely happen in our own world. So we go to books to experience them.
Now that I have ranted about something that doesn’t really have anything to do with The Lovely Bones, I probably should get back to it. The Lovely Bones isn’t one of those books that keep you reading because of the action. It keeps you reading because you become emotionally connected to the characters, and you desperately want everything to turn out well for them, because so many other things have gone wrong. In a way, The Lovely Bones kind of reminds me of another book I’ve read, called The Sky Is Everywhere
So The Lovely Bones….definitely a good read. One to add to your summer reading list 🙂