All in all, if people love this book and it affects them, changes their life, their outlook, makes them feel warm and fuzzy, makes them tearful or full of rapture - that's a good thing. It’s downright addictive reading material, and once you read it, you’ll never look at your neighbors the same way again. But this book was interestingly written because it's from the point of view from a girl who was murdered. As she watches over her family, she has to decide what’s more important to her: her love for her family, or her vengeance against her killer.

Sometimes you just need to read a really fun psychological thriller—and that’s the boat I found myself in last week. Downing throws out tired genre cliches in favor of a razor-sharp, genuinely shocking story of love’s (very) dark side. If she wants her family to heal, Susie will have to forgive her killer’s actions and move on into the afterlife.

The only thing that kept me going to the end was sheer bloody-mindedness; a determination not to be defeated by any book no matter how brain-deflatingly awful it is. If you loved the movie Ready or Not or Jessica Knoll’s psychological thriller Luckiest Girl Alive, you’ll love Catherine Steadman’s THE FAMILY GAME. I feel like my own writing might have been permanently damaged by reading this book… like a couple of… ferocious… olives? By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform.

More than any other criteria, the key thing these books have in common is simple: they are all books I’ve continued to think about since I finished reading them. Alice Sebold delivers originality in her novel by creating a heart-warming story told from the fresh point of view of a young girl in heaven. A quick aside: I’d love to know the moment in which author Downing was struck with the inspiration for this premise; it’s just so wild, and so good. The two depart for a tranquil honeymoon in a country farmhouse but find, instead of a well-prepared love nest, the place left in a shambles by the previous owner. This book has single handedly shown me that I spend too much time skimming and not enough time really reading and thinking about the books I have been reading.

Things change, and things often do, but there is no forward movement and certainly no building of suspense. After being witnessed sweet 14 years old girl: Susie Salmon’s rape and massacre by her creepy, doll maker, 36 years old neighbor, you want to throw up, scream, pump your fist into something, scream more, wish to do something stop the visual images imprinted on your mind! To clear the family name, Lord Peter and Inspector Charles Parker scour the lodge’s grounds, finding several tantalizing clues, including mysterious footprints, a piece of jewelry, and a cat charm. They just seem to be reading each other’s reviews, praising the unique first person narrative of a protagonist in heaven and how it deals with such a horrifying topic.