Book report

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is a mystery book that is good for teaching young teenagers about why they shouldn’t trust strangers. It’s a book about a 14 year old girl living in Pennsylvania when one day on her way home from school, she decides to take a short cut threw a corn field when she runs into Mr. Harvey a man from her neighborhood.
Sussie Salmon is a 14 year old girl with red hair and blue eyes. She’s a kind student, smart, and has a loving family. She has a sister and two brothers that are all younger then her. Sussie is one of the smarter students in the school and is always truthful with her parents about her where about. The one thing Sussie loves the most is taking pictures, pictures of anything she thinks is pretty. She had a special relationship with her dad; they would stay up all night and make ships in bottles as a hobby. One day after school, she is running late after staying for volunteer work so she decides to take a short cut before it gets any darker out. It was a cloudy evening; wind blowing softly threw the empty corn field with a light blanket of snow covering the mud. Suddenly she sees Mr. Harvey coming out of the fog on the other side of the field. Mr. Harvey is a single man who loves his flowers and he lives a few houses down from the Salmons. He’s new in the neighborhood and doesn’t know many people. Mr. Harvey always came off as an innocent guy to Sussie, with brown hair that started to fade grey on the sides, glasses, a mustache, and always dresses elderly with vests and dress shoes.
After Sussie is murdered, she spends her time looking after her friends and family from heaven. In her heaven, she isn’t alone, she is with 7 other girls some younger and some older then her and it isn’t until later on she discovers who they are. Her heaven is like her life every day, she can see everyone, she can talk to them but they don’t see her, and can’t hear her. They live their lives as if she never excited. Her favorite place in her heaven is an old gazebo by a river, where she can look into the river and see her dad where ever he is.
The main message behind the story of The Lovely Bones is that if you don’t know someone really well and you’re alone with them and no one knows where you are, try to avoid going somewhere with them, because anything is possible these days. Make sure you tell a friend or a family member, you can also bring a friend along with you so there are less chances of something happening. You have to trust the people your with, if you have any doubts about them at all your probably right and try to stay away from them. Know that these days you don’t really know what people are thinking about and what they can do so I’ve learned not to talk to strangers and if I’m in a situation like this, to run as far and fast as I can. Mr. Harvey is a serial killer that hasn’t been caught for his past murders, but thanks to Sussie’s dad and sister, he was finally convicted of what he has done.
Mr. Harvey takes Sussie to an underground club house that he said he built for the kids in the neighborhood to use to hang out it when ever they like and he would like to show her. At first she hesitated then he told her that she’d be the first one to see it and she was happy about that. Once they are down in the hangout spot, Mr. Harvey starts complimenting Sussie and try to kiss her. She started to yell and run but she didn’t make it up the ladder and no one could hear her underground in the middle of a field. He then rapes her and kills her, chopping up her body into pieces and putting them in garbage bags. He takes the bags out, kills the whole back with dirt and thinks he gets away with it. Later that night, at the Salmon house, her family is worried and calls the cops. They send out a search team and find her hat that her mom made for her in the corn field beside the buried underground hide away. Jack Salmon, Sussie’s dad thinks that it’s pointless to find the person who did this to his daughter till one day when he got frustrated and started breaking the model boats in glass bottles; he had a dream that she told him who did it. He spent his life trying to figure out Mr. Harvey’s life and who he is. One day, late at night he sees him in his bathroom, with knifes and shortly after, he sees blood on the window. When Mr. Harvey was done cleaning the blood off the window which is when he realized that Mr. Salmon was watching him from across the street. Mr. Salmon calls the cops and they go to Mr. Harvey’s door and ask for him to pen his garage and take a look around. They look in the garbage bags that smell like rotten corps and find a deer head.
A few days later, Lindsey, Sussie younger sister has a dream about Sussie telling her that Mr. Harvey has proof in his basement. Lindsey doesn’t say anything at first because she didn’t want to seem crazy. At dinner that night, her dad was sharing with everyone that he had another dream that Sussie said “Don’t to give up, you’ll find it soon enough, keep looking.” That’s when Lindsey started talking about her dream. The next day, on her way to school, she sees Mr. Harvey leave to go out so she decides to break in and look around. She goes into the basement, but comes up dry, tries his bedroom and looks into his side table and as she walks towards it, she feels the boards in the floor lift. She removes the boards and hears the door open, its Mr. Harvey back already. She quickly looks under the floor, and finds a small red book and flips threw it quickly and she soon finds out that the book she has in her hand has all the plans to how he executed the murder on her sister. She quickly drops the book back in the whole as she hears footsteps coming up the stairs and put the flooring back on and jumps out the window. As he enters the room, he see the floor isn’t placed properly, looks out the window and see Lindsey run away from his yard. She runs straight home and calls her dad and tells him. They call the cops and by the time they come, he’s gone. He toke the safe where he hide Sussie’s body over to the town sink hole and throws it in. when he returns, the cops are at his door waiting to arrest him after they found the book, and several other books along with pictures of girls and a clip of there hair.
At that moment, Sussie is set free, she is joined by the 7 other girls that Mr. Harvey raped and killed, walk out from the gazebo, into a field filled with flowers as the hold hand, and skip along towards the mountains.
The book was an interesting book, kept my attention threw out making me want to read more and more. At some parts, it would be too much detail and would move slowly throw the story. It relates to real life because there are people out there who do things like this every day.