#47 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

My Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

Though not my usual genre, this was a good read nonetheless. The story is told from the first-person viewpoint of Susie Salmon, a murdered 14 year old girl who died at the hands of a neighbor whom nobody suspects. Nobody that is, except her father who's got a nagging feeling that George Harvey is behind Susy's disappearance.

So Susie's looking down at her family and friends from heaven, watching her death split her family apart, remembering events that happened in the past, and trying as hard as she can (even though she can't affect things on earth) to point her family and the police in the right direction of her murderer. An old classmate Ruth, and former boyfriend Ray, become close, and Ruth is somewhat of a medium, able to communicate with spirits, a skill she doesn't realize she possesses until Susie brushes past her and actually touches her as her soul transcends to heaven. Ruth becomes important later in the story too with some of the things she can do.

Though I don't believe in the Christian concept of heaven, I do believe in a similar place where our souls go to await reincarnation. So I could still relate to this story just as easily as anyone else, especially since they didn't use Christian divinity concepts. As a matter of fact, Susy's heaven seemed much more like the Pagan Summerlands than what I've seen heaven portrayed as.

See the BookCrossing journal page for this book for more reviews and information.