4 stars. The beginning is a brutal and horrifying but there are some amazing parts throughout. There are so many emotions and so many ways people deal with grief, a lot of which a really well woven together throughout this story. ( )

Month of August 2022 - Trendy Novels

This story is told from the point of view of 14 year old Susie Salmon, who was raped and murdered. She was stuck in an in-between Heavenly world. Her guide told her she would pass into the higher Heavens when she could stop asking why her instead of someone else, or wondering what everyone else was feeling because of losing her, and stop investigating this vacuum left by her loss. (p. 120). She has to give up on earth. This point right here COULD be how we experience death, at least until Jesus comes for his people right before the Rapture. You don’t know, and I don’t know because we are not there. The fact is, you die and your spirit is somewhere until Jesus comes and, the Bible does say He raises the dead first.

1 Thessalonians chapter 4:16:

“For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.”

But, Susie doesn’t. She’s obsessed with what she missed on earth, and that was Ray Singh. Her first kiss before her neighbor, George Harvey, her rapist and murderer, enticed her into his little dungeon.

Susie watches her family and friends for eight and a half years after her death as they learn to maneuver through life without her. She has an opportunity to return to earth for one night, into Ruth’s body, who was Ray’s friend, to finish what they started. Strange…because Susie is still only 14 and Ray is now 22 years old.

Keep in mind that this writing is purely “creative” writing and doesn’t necessarily reflect real heaven. It started out pretty interesting, then completely fell flat for me. The story centered around the things she missed on earth and not the killer. It seemed patchy, jumping from one memory to another. I was simply bored with the story…the reason for the two stars. The ending also fell flat for me.

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#69 on the 2018 PBS Great 100 American Read Challenge, which I have been slowly working on and marking off:

https://www.listchallenges.com/pbs-great-american-read-2018 ( )

While unique in concept, there are so many things that bothered me about this book, I hardly know where to start.

First and foremost, while Sebold achieved great commercial success with this freshman novel, it still reads as a freshman novel. The schtick is clearly the only part of the book thought through and exists to cover the lack of other literary elements.

The first person, omnipresent narrative is clunky and not well explained (if the narrator knows what people are thinking show her figuring out that she knows!) and leads to a very much told, rather than shown, storyline.

The historical setting is both unnecessary and goes unmentioned for several hundred pages, so when reminded 200 pages in that the date is 1977, it is very confusing.

There are a plethora of characters, all of whom seem minor, since not enough time is spent on any for them to be more of a cliche.

The pacing is deplorable -- several years will pass over the course of two pages and then 50 pages will be spent on a single day or two, with the years that pass without mention covering such important events as everyone coming to believe the main character's father on the identity of the killer, while the time that we focus on covers the sexual explorations of the main character's little sister. The payload of the book, as it were, comes in the last 20 pages, with no harbinger and no evidence that this was the intended ending.

The intended audience is also unclear. The writing style is clearly too juvenile for a larger adult/older teen audience, and the literary foibles are difficult to overlook, even for the audience of adults/older teens who read young adult fiction. At the same time, the focus on the book being rape and murder and several explicit sexual passages make this book at best uncomfortable reading for young teens. ( )

I read this for a bookclub, and frankly the discussions that came from it were better than the book itself. This book did raise a tantalizing question I had never thought to ask: what does heaven smell like? ( )

As cheeseball as the premise is, I adored this story. (I am nervous about what the movie will be like...probably horrible.) ( )