This is a story that touched my heart and made me think about things and what really matters. The Lovely Bones is a heart-grabbing book worth experiencing.

The murder of Susie Salmon on December 17, 1973 at age 14, is how the story becomes to be something you would never think could be described in a book, from the pain she has and the pain each one of her family members coping with the tragedy of her murder.

“You don’t notice the dead leaving when they choose to leave you. You’re not meant to. At most you feel them as a whisper or the wave of a whisper undulating down,” says Alice Sebold in her novel.

When Susie understands her new home in heaven, she is watching her family fall apart. As Franny, her helper and guide in heaven, is the one that is helping her understand how to get more freedom she has to let her family and loved ones go. She watches over her family and loved ones and doesn’t know how to leave all of her memories and her murderer walk the streets and live next door to her family and friends. As Susie is growing and understanding heaven and what she is meant to do, she watches her sister Lindsey and little brother Buckley grow and have the life she would never have.

But the love and strength they gave each other is the way they stayed strong and held on and knew somewhere the Susie was there with them and that she was OK and that she wanted them to move on with their lives and not hold the past on their shoulders.

Next year, the novel will become a movie, and will come from the story of the little girl named Susie, the story that she only knows, and of the truths she and her family and friends are searching for.