Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - The Lovely Bones

This book was so much. There is no proper way to put it into words. I have never read a book that has made me feel this way for the charachters as if they were this real and the events did actually occur. It made me aware of all the people in the real world who have lived through something that terrible. At the same time, though, it proved to me that humans are hopeful creatures that can live through just about anything with the right people. This book covers an incredibly dark subject, and deals with it in a very, real, trying human way. I felt so much sadness and sympathy for Susie and everyone deeply affected by her death. The writing was glorious. It flowed beatuifully and was never clunky. These charachters were so vivid and real. I cried in the worst times and laughed in the best. The dark side of the plot was not shadowed with hate, either. Read this book if you are ready to be plunged into quite a dark place and come out of it with gratitude for life and a slice of the kind of hope that trascends even the most evil of things.

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kly227's review

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This book was extremely fascinating in the beginning. The premise is promising but it does not follow all the way through.
I found myself emotional many times during this book. It put me in a dark headspace going to bed each night, which was hard. I felt connected to the characters because the family set up is exactly like mine as a child- and I would have been Susie. I found myself empathizing so much for Susie and her family in the first half; I found this book to be a very real and very difficult demonstration of grief.
On the negative side… the characters were extremely flat and hardly had any purpose for the story. The development of the plot was strange- as I kept hoping it would go a certain way or that there was a reason I was learning something specific about a character, and it never came back. This was frustrating and made a lot of the random paragraphs of detail throughout the book literally pointless.

Spoiler

The end of this book was really rocky. There was a paranormal, tricky sex scene that was basically sexual assault (but is glorified to be this amazing, transcendent experience between a 14 y/o and a 20 y/o) that made me extremely uncomfortable. It did not align with the rest of the story and it ruined some characters for me. Loose ends with characters were never tied up or dealt with in any shape or form. Characters were never held accountable for their mistakes and nothing was ever reprimanded.
Finally, maybe this is a personal thing, but I was not happy that the lovely bones were never found. That was my desire the entire time, and maybe it’s more realistic that we lose the body of the person forever but darn it! There are still so many questions.

Going to watch the very low-rated movie now, wish me luck!

Spoiler

Content Warnings