PLOT: When we first meet Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. As she looks down from this strange new place, she tells us, in the fresh and spirited voice of a fourteen-year-old girl, a tale that is both haunting and full of hope.
In the weeks following her death, Susie watches life continuing without her-her school friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her family holding out hope that she'll be found, her killer trying to cover his tracks. As months pass without leads, Susie sees her parents' marriage being contorted by loss, her sster hardening herself in an effort to stay strong, and her little brother tying to grasp the meaning of the word
gone.
And she explores the place called heaven. It looks a lot like her school playground, with the good kind of swing sets. There are counselors to help newcomers adjust and friends to room with. Everything she ever wanted appears as soon as she thinks of it-except the thing she wants most: to be back with the people she loved on Earth.
With compassion, longing, and a growing understanding, Susie sees her loved ones pass through grief and begin to mend. Her father embarks on a risky quest to ensnare her killer. Her sister undertakes a feat of remarkable daring. And the boy Susie cared for moves on, only to find himself at the center of a miraculous event.
The Lovely Bones is luminous and astonishing, a novel that builds out of grief the most hopeful of stories. On the hands of a brilliant new writer, this story of the worst thing a family can face is transformed into a suspenseful and even funny novel about love, memory, joy, heaven and healing.
MY OPINION: A co-worker of mine was helping me think of suggestions for the next Ladybug Book Club Meeting. She suggested two books - The Lovely Bones and The Road. I then, suggested these two books to the book club and we all voted on three books. The Lovely Bones came in first and The Road a close second. I was so excited when I checked The Lovely Bones out at the library.
This book is one of my favorites. You really fall in love with Susie and you want so bad for them to find her killer. You also see her family and friends try to remember her but also try to move past in some ways also.
From the time I picked up this novel it was so hard to put down and do the things that needed to be done around me. I'm so happy with the ending. It didn't end as planned but it was even better right down to the last page.
PLOT: Harper Connelly heads to Doraville, North Carolina, to find a missing boy--one of several teenage boys who have disappeared over the last five years. And all of them are calling for Harper. She finds them--buried in the frozen ground. All Harper wants is to get out of town before she's caught in the media storm, until she herself is attacked. Soon, Harper will learn more than she cared to about the dark mysteries and long-hidden secrets of Doraville--knoledge of the dead that makes her the next in line to end up in an ice cold grave...
So, I love both Twilight movies. I'm going to start reading the books once I finish with "An Ice Cold Grave". I can't wait, I hear they are good.
PLOT: A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the gather and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, The Road is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
PLOT: Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park has changed over the years-from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline Plunge-so, too, has Eddie changed, from optimistic youth to embittered old age. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret.
PLOT: At the request of anthropology professor Clyde Nunley, Harper Connelly and her stepbrother Tolliver come to Memphis to demonstrate Harper's unique talent-in an old cemetery, Nunley is skeptical, even after Harper senses-and finds-two bodies in the grave beneath her feet. One of a man centuries dead. The other, a young girl, recently deceased, whom Harper had once tried, and failed, to locate. But Harper's new investigation into the crime yields yet another surprise: the next morning, a third body is found-in the very same grave...
