This book seems to fall squarely into the "love it or hate it" category. My experience of it is definitely the former. I enjoyed every moment of The Lovely Bones, despite my initial reluctance due to it's potentially morbid topic. However, I was pleasantly surprised that Sebold was able to skillfully explore the brutal rape and murder of a teenager, and her family's resulting grief, with such sensitivity and calm, without descending into horror for even a moment. I found the book more about the experience of living than the experience of dying. Here is a quote from the back cover, that I think captures the book well:

The Lovely Bones is a luminous and astonishing novel about life and death, forgiveness and vengeance, memory and forgetting. It is, above all, a novel which finds light in the darkest of places, and shows how even when that light seems to be utterly extinguished, it is still there, waiting to be rekindled.

This book is definitely among the top 10 books I have ever read. I am continuing to reflect on it, and anticipate that I will read it again in the not-too-distant future.

Being one of my favourite books ever, I don't plan on releasing this one into the wild. Instead I'm lending it to a friend. I'm very eager to hear her impressions of it!