Title: The Lovely Bones

Author: Alice Sebold

Genre: Contemporary, Mystery

Rating: ★★★★★

Why I read it: Gifted a copy and honestly I should have read it a long time ago 

I love books that make me feel things. And this book made me feel every emotion. 

If you live on this earth (or even if you don’t – hello, alien friends!) and are even remotely interested in books, I’m assuming you’ve likely heard of The Lovely Bones, and maybe even read it. And even if you haven’t heard of the book, or read it, surely you’ve heard about the movie, or seen it. Somehow, because apparently I’ve been living under a rock, I had not seen the movie, nor had I read the book, but I had heard of it. And when it came into my life via a stack of books gifted from a friend, I took it as a sign to finally dive in. 

What is interesting is that somehow I had gaslit myself into thinking I had already read it. So when I saw it in the stack, my first thought was how nice it would be to do a reread. Imagine my surprise when I read the first few pages and came to realize I definitely had not read it. Because surely I would vividly remember reading a book where the main character shares my name, right? 

To catch you up, The Lovely Bones is about Susie. Susie is a young girl in a nice neighborhood who was murdered and now resides in her version of heaven, where she watches her community and her family process their grief while she mourns the life she could have lived. It sounds intense, and it is. But it is also a hopeful, beautiful, and complex story that depicts how the worst of tragedies affect people in individual and unique ways, and why processing grief looks different for everyone. 

I knew going into this story that it would be sad. I expected to cry, to mourn, to reflect. I didn’t expect to be swept up in the desperation displayed by Susie’s dad as he sought her killer, and no one believed him. Or to have shouldered the pain and longing felt by Susie’s mom as she wrestled with the war raging between the life she lives and the life she lost. Or how I marveled at the resolve and love felt by Susie’s siblings as they navigate stepping into her shoes and living through milestones they know Susie will never get to achieve. All of these characters, and many others, are vividly and beautifully written, and I found myself rooting for each of them on their journeys. Most of all, I found myself connecting with Susie as she navigated this new world and as she achieved milestones all her own. 

While the story itself is powerful, I think my favorite part of the book is the writing style. Every single word in this book was intentionally selected, painstakingly chosen, to evoke the exact emotion needed at exactly the right time. The author’s precision in their prose pays off as each word communicates a message to the reader, and there wasn’t a moment when I felt disconnected from that message. For a novel covering topics this delicate, this intentionality is required, and I don’t think the author could have executed any better. 

In its wake, this novel has left a longing in my heart that can only be explained as the sadness that I will never be able to read this book for the first time again. I spent a few days sitting and writing this review, never quite coming up with the right words to say that accurately convey the emotions I felt when I turned the last page (clearly, I am not as polished as Sebold). It has been a long time since a novel has moved me to tears, multiple times, and I know I will be thinking about this work for years to come. If what I have written so far hasn’t convinced you to read this book, then let it be this: I don’t consider myself to be a religious person, but this book has convinced me that maybe, just maybe, those that we have lost are still with us in some capacity. But, as Len would say, nothing is ever certain.

TL;DR: Would I recommend it to a friend? Yes, yes, a million times yes. Proceed with caution as it touches on some sensitive topics, but I’ve never felt so much as I did while reading this book.