The "Lovely" Bones Unveiled...

I'm going to have to go with a three star rating for this book.  It's not terrible, it's just kinda...up and down throughout the whole thing.  I know I'm kind of behind the times with reading this book AFTER it was trendy.  But it was on my "get to eventually" list.  SO I got to it!

Anyways, the book starts out AWESOME.  The first 30-40 pages I couldn't put it down.  As most of you know, the book is sort of a murder mystery.  And like lots of you know, I'm a lover of Law & Order: SVU so I LOVED that aspect of this book.  The interesting part of the book is that the story is told from the viewpoint of the murdered girl, Susie.  She is raped and murdered and tells the "full" story that even her family doesn't know.  So throughout the book she is narrating their investigation to "solving" her mystery.

I will say that I enjoy reading different interpretations of what people think heaven is like.  Susie describes heaven in a really unique way that I've never imagined it.  Every person in heaven with Susie has their own perfect heaven.  So if my perfect heaven was drinking coffee at open mic night, that's what it would be.  Kinda cool.

So anyways, AS USUAL, I have a couple nit-picky things of this book that were a little annoying.  Not nearly as annoying as Fifty Shades (that book just put me in a constant eye-rolling state). My annoyances with the book were:

1. In the beginning of the book when Susie is walking us through her abduction and murder Alice Sebold is SO descriptive with each detail: how Mr. Harvey (the rapist) smells, what Susie was wearing, the room they were in...So you're being led step by step through the entire crime then all of a sudden "Mr. Harvey gets out his knife and approaches Susie....the next day a dog was sniffing around the cornfield and found a patch of blood and stood there barking until someone found 'the crime scene'...."  It just kinda pissed me off that she was going to be so descriptive then all of a sudden FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF.  They just totally skip over describing the actual FINISH of the job. Blah.
2. Throughout the entire book they keep referencing Susie's Keystone PA bracelet that her dad got her when she was young.  I know you don't judge a book by its cover, and I usually don't, but the cover of this book has a charm bracelet that has a house dangling from it.  Not a keystone charm?!  It wouldn't bother me if they didn't reference this bracelet throughout the entire book.  So it's just weird that what they describe isn't what was drawn for the cover illustration. Blah 2. 
3. OBVIOUSLY, when a family has a daughter abducted and murdered they go  through some serious mourning and recovery.  So Susie's family starts going through this weird recovery process.  The Dad starts going through this shut down state, so the Mom gets irritated.  The kids are left to fend for themselves so Grandma moves in (Grandma, BTW, seems like she'd be right up my alley!  She's hilarious.  She wears heals, gets all dressed up AND she loves her cocktails.).   So the family starts falling apart.  SO IRRITATING part is when a good hundred pages of the book is just about this weird 8 year rant where the Mom cheats on the husband, moves away, starts working at a winery...it has NOTHING to do with solving the mystery.  BORING!
4. My final beef was this:  

This excerpt is from the final chunk of the book.  Mr. Harvey is getting ready to try and strike again, and he follows this chick out of a diner to smoke a cig.  He tries coming onto her to lure her in...she calls him a creep and then BAM!  Apparently, he dies by crashing icicles???  But AGAIN, Sebold isn't descriptive and leaves you to figure that part out for yourself.  

So, the family never really gets closure or finds out Mr. Harvey indeed killed her (they did suspect it the whole time though).  Then he dies by getting ICICLED???!!! I just wanted a little more dramatic conclusion to the mystery.  Olivia Benson & Elliott Stabler would have never let this story end like this.  But, WHATEVS!  

Overall, not a terrible story.  I liked the plot...I just didn't like the rants, bunny trails and unfinished business the book leaves you with.  Might have given it a different title.  The only BONE they actually found was a piece of her elbow...but IDK what else they might've called it.  So I put this one back on my bookshelf.  Maybe my next DIY project will be illustrating a new cover for this one...with the RIGHT CHARM.  Ha.  We shall see...