The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The novel, The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold is a suspenseful book about a 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon, who is murdered and watches her family and her murderer continue their lives from heaven. 

One of the significant scenes from this book is when Susie’s sister, Lindsey, starts getting involved in the investigation of her sister’s murder. One day, Lindsey and her dad talk about Mr. Harvey, whom he thinks is the murderer, and how they need to find evidence that would link to Susie. Thus, Lindsey decides to stalk Mr. Harvey and memorize his daily schedule in order to break into his house. When the day comes, she secretly and successfully sneaks into his house. She “sees” Susie and is lead by her to Mr. Harvey’s bedroom where she finds a sketchbook. Inside the sketchbook is “a small drawing of stalks above a sunken hole…in a spidery hand [Mr. Harvey] had written “Stolfuz cornfield”…Now [Lindsey] saw what [Susie] wanted her to know.  [Susie] had died inside that hole; [Susie] had screamed and fought and lost” (183). While Lindsey is horrified by her new discovery, Mr. Harvey comes home and hears her upstairs. Although Lindsey is able to escape and is unharmed, Mr. Harvey sees her run away. After reading scene, I thought that this was an important part of the book because now that evidence is found, I figured Mr. Harvey would be arrested for all the crimes he has committed in the past, including Susie’s murder. However, this cunning, clever man acts all innocent and tells the police a believable story that he was trying to figure out how Susie’s murderer killed her in which the cops believed. Thus, Mr. Harvey unfortunately gets away with it once again.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this novel because I like suspenseful stories, and I constantly wanted to know what would happen next. People should read until the very end since it is very satisfying and karmic. Although I saw the movie first, it was still interesting to read the book and compare it to the movie. I recommend this novel to those who like suspense, and they should watch the movie after as well.