Though it had been released in 2002, The Lovely Bones wasn’t too popular.  When the trailer for the movie started popping up everywhere, I learned that it had been a book first and had to go read it.  Every book-based movie is ten times better when you’ve read the book.  At nearly 400 pages in the paperback edition, it was a fairly quick read and the pace of events in it was perfect.  There wasn’t a time I got bored and wanted to put it down, which many books often have.

The premise is a girl, Susie, who is raped and murdered in 1973 by a man who no one expects to have done it.  From her heaven, she watches her family as they grieve and attempt to move on, and the police as the get no closer to catching her killer.  She watches as her brother and sister grow up and mature faster than they should have, and her parents grow apart.  She sees her friends and classmates try to understand, and observes as some of them find each other within the tragedy of it all.

Her father suspects the killer to be their neighbor, George Harvey.  The police have no reason to suspect him, and turn up nothing when they question him.  He shares his suspicions with his other daughter, and Susie watches as her only sister risks everything to help and catch him.  

This book is full of an aspect from many genres- drama, suspense, a few laughs, tragedy, and an insight into the grievances of an entire family, and their community, when a piece of them is taken away.  It’s beautifully written and will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens to each of Susie’s family members, and Susie herself.
 
Some of the most realistic and honest books that you might ever read are ones written by Ellen Hopkins.  Born in Long Beach, California, Ellen Hopkins was raised by her adoptive parents Albert and Valeria Wagner and grew up in Palm Springs, California.  She found her biological mother in 2000, and discovered she is a writer and poet, too.  She attended high school near Santa Barbara, and was slightly active in some sports, but mainly in dance, theater, creative writing, and choir.  At UCSB she studied journalism, but left school to marry and start her family.  After her first marriage didn’t work out, she met her current husband John in 1984 and then began pursuing her dream of being an author.  She has four children, the oldest three being 28, 30, and 32, and the youngest being adopted and now 12.  

After visiting the Air and Space museum in 1998, she was inspired to write her first two nonfiction titles, geared towards children, and has written 20 more nonfiction titles for children since.  For fiction, she has published picture books and short stories, and has written 6 novels (5 of which I have read) that are geared more towards young adults and are centered on rather tragic, but very realistic, stories.  

The 5 stories which I own and enjoy bear the following titles: Burned, Crank, Glass, Impulse, and Identical.  Glass is the sequel to Crank, and she has another sequel, Fallout, coming out this year.  Her novel titled Tricks appeared on bookshelves in August of 2009, and now that I’ve found it on Amazon.com, I’m going to be ordering it very soon, along with Fallout when it is released.  The stories are centered on young adults who have troubled lives due to childhood abuse, addiction to drugs and/or alcohol, and the many other things that affect much of the youth today.

Each story is written in an interesting format, not only the actual content of it, but the way the words are printed on the page itself.  The one I remember most distinctly was the one that was shaped like a bottle of alcohol; I believe it may have been in Crank or Glass.  My favorite of all the books is Impulse, which I have read on more than one occasion.  I definitely recommend any of these books, especially to young adults, but really anyone with the maturity to handle the content of them.