The book, The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold is about a young girl named, Susie Salmon. Susie Salmon is a curious and caring girl. Her family is very strong and close until Susie goes missing and is told from police that she had been murdered. We read from the prospective of Susie looking down to Earth from heaven. Her father and younger sister, Lindsey, grows suspicion that a man from their neighborhood killed Susie and begins to take the investigation into their own hands. Her mother can't deal with the loss of her daughter and needs a rest from being a mother. Throughout the book, her family becomes detached and greatly struggles with their loss.

The Lovely Bones, forces all families to realize that they could lose each other any day and they should take advantage of all the days they have together. When Lindsey, Susie's younger sister, and her father discover that Susie has been murdered and discover that the police have no leads they investigate on her murder on their own. They both risk their lives in order to find and prove who murdered Susie. Susie's mother goes into depression and detaches herself from her family. Families see what a loss can do to a family and begin to realize what they are missing out on. Personally, reading the first chapter was very difficult considering that I have older and younger siblings. Also, I do not have a close relationship with my dad and sister and this book made me reach out to them and build up to a good relationship. I realized from just reading the first chapter that I should take advantage of the time that I have with my family.

In the beginning of the book, Susie uses setting to explain her death, "Mr. Harvey made me lie still underneath him and listen to the beating of his heart and the beating of mine. How mine skipped like a rabbit, and how his thudded, a hammer against cloth. We lay there with our bodies touching, and, as I shook, a powerful knowledge took hold. He had done this thing to me and I had lived. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart. I smelled his breath. The dark earth surrounding us smelled like what it was, moist dirt where worms and animals lived their daily lives." This shows that she uses setting because she describes what she is hearing, touching, smelling and seeing. The readers can hear, touch, smell and see what she is experiencing from her descriptions. In the first couple of pages of the book, the author, Alice Sebold has readers in tears from imagining what a fictional character, Susie, is going through which is what makes this book a bestseller.


I would recommend this book to ages 14 years old and up. This is because I don't think that someone who is younger than 14 is mature enough to read some of the chapters in this book. Also, someone younger than 14 might not understand the vocabulary. If they cannot understand the vocabulary they will not understand the intensity of this story. I believe that people who are 14 years old can handle some of the more disturbing chapters. They also have a big enough vocabulary to understand what Alice Sebold is writing. Also, Susie is a fictional character but what happened to her can happen to any teenager and this book teaches people 14 years old and up to be very careful with everyone they come in contact with. I propose that people 14 years old and up read the book, The Lovely Bones.