Banned Book: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Banned Books Week takes place the last week of September every year. It's a time to bring awareness of the banning and challenging of books that is still prevalent in our society. To support the freedom to read, I choose a banned/challenged book that I've never read before. Because of this, my review is slightly different, as I tend to focus on the reason it was banned or challenged for most of the review. For more information on Banned Books Week, visit ala.org.

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Publication date: 2002
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Pages: 372
My rating: 3 stars
Ages: 16+

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Suzie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." Once Suzie is murdered, she follows her family, friends, and murderer from her view in Heaven. She watches as her family falls apart and changes without her there. Will she ever find the peace she needs to move on with her life after death? What will become of her parents, sister, and brother? These are the questions that are answered throughout the course of Suzie's story.

This book was banned in a least a couple of middle schools due to the nature of the story, mostly, I think, because of how Suzie was killed. When this book was first published, I was in middle school and I remember it making a big splash with a lot of people my age. That being said, I was in ninth grade. Because Suzie is raped and then murdered, I don't know if I would recommend it for kids under the age of 16, maybe 15, even though Suzie is fourteen. Mostly I think it's just because teens younger than that would 1) have a hard time understanding what's happening, and 2) be more mentally disturbed by it.

As for how I felt about the book as a whole: when it first started I was kind of interested. I felt like it was a mystery, but one where you already knew who the criminal was and you're just waiting for everyone else to find out too. I was sure that at some time they would catch the man who murdered Suzie. By the time I got to about the last 150 pages, the story seemed to change and everything seemed to be going really fast. To me, it was almost as if it became a completely different story. I wasn't that satisfied by the ending. This is probably just because it wasn't what I expected. The writing was good and kept me interested.

There is some language and sex, which also caused me to put my recommended age higher.

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