The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Whenever I hear of a new movie in the theaters, my first question is whether or not it is a book. Why? Any avid book reader knows that the book is always better than the movie; but, for me at least, watching the movie first seems to ruin the suspense of the book. So, I try to read the book first. I saw the trailer to this movie and I was very interested, so I bought the book on my kindle and began reading immediately. I was not disappointed at all. The first thing I noticed was that Sebold does a lovely job keeping the voice of a 13 year old throughout the book, which must be hard when she is dealing with such a tough and adult subject. You feel the character's pain because her friends and family when she was alive are growing up, but she is still stuck in "her heaven" and she will never experience dating a boy or graduating or going to college because her life was taken from her. It's heartbreaking. Without giving the story away, I have to point out the one flaw I found: the ending. Yes, the ending wraps everything up but there's a part of the ending that is contrived and unnecessary and it makes the reader go "Where did that come from?" and "Why in the world did the author do this?" I understand the author's desire to give the main character something back after losing everything because of a killer, but the way she did it seems like a far stretch from the rest of her novel. If you can forgive the author the ending, then you will absolutely adore the author's writing style and beautifully told story about a coming of age girl who had everything ripped away from her but in the end she has to choose between the solving of her murder or the saving of her family. What would you choose?

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If you are a fan of Jane Austen, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Charlaine Harris, Stephenie Meyers, and/or James Patterson, then you might want to check out this site for new reviews of books I've recently read. My tastes are very eclectic. I read many different genres, but they all have something in common: they are all fictional. If you are an avid reader of self help books or biographies, then this is NOT the blog for you. However, if you enjoy learning more from history by reading authors like Philippa Gregory or learning about new characters by reading series of works, then this IS the blog for you. The purpose of this blog is to talk about books honestly and openly without bad mouthing the authors or the people who enjoy the literature. I look forward to serving all of you with my most honest reviews of books I have found myself reading. Enjoy!