The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold captivates the attentions of millions of people. This book taught me about living and dying, holding on and letting go. The Lovely Bones made me feel emotions I didn't want to feel. The sadness, beauty, pain, acceptance, horror, regret, and grief of this book enthralled (look it up) me. Throughout the book I couldn't stop thinking, what if this happened to me? How could anyone live through this? How would a mother live through this? The most touching and beautiful yet terrible and painful book I've read so far.Here is a quick summary of this book: Susie Salmon was a regular teenage girl. On December 6, 1973 she was murdered. As Susie leaves earth and enters her new home in heaven, her family and friends grieve over their missing child. Susie watches life on earth continue without her, her parents lost but still trying to keep their normal life, her friends talking about her disappearance and her killer covering his tracks. Soon they start to find bits of pieces, her clothes, backpack, notes, and body parts. Now all her family wants is to find their daughters body and to send their daughters killer to jail. While friends, lovers, and family are being questioned, Susie is watching her killer erase the evidence. The police are doing what they can but Susie's dad knows her killer is out their somewhere, he just needs to put the pieces back together.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to adults, and teens (9th grade and up). I could read this over and over again and still cry and still want to read it again. "You don't notice the dead leaving when they really choose to leave you. You're not meant to. At most you feel them as a whisper or the wave of a whisper undulating down... The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future... The destination somehow inevitable, the sights seen in passing so many time. But this time I was accompanied, not ripped away, and I knew we were taking a long trip to a place very far away." (The Lovely Bones, By Alice Sebold)
