Do the Bleach light novels follow the manga plot?

Question

I know that there are two Bleach light novels (BLEACH-letters from the other side: The Death and The Strawberry and Bleach: The Honey Dish Rhapsody). Do they follow the Bleach manga plot lines or do they diverge? If they follow the manga, what chapters do they cover? If not, what happens in them?

Answer 1

I found two other light novels that you hadn't mentioned also - Link

I know that there are two Bleach light novels (BLEACH-letters from the other side: The Death and The Strawberry and Bleach: The Honey Dish Rhapsody). Do they follow the Bleach manga plot lines or do they diverge? If they follow the manga, what chapters do they cover? If not, what happens in them?

The light novels seem to be short stories that the manga/anime doesn't cover, but run concurrently with the plot.

BLEACH-letters from the other side: The Death and The Strawberry was released November 15, 2006 and Bleach: The Honey Dish Rhapsody on October 31, 2008. So before volumes 25 & 36 respectively (not sure if this helps, don't read bleach myself)

Wikia mentions that letters from the other side: The Death and The Strawberry was a novelization of some of the earlier chapters

Again Wikia tells us that Honey Dish Rhapsody is set during the week Ichigo and his friends spent in Soul Society following the betrayal of Aizen.

'Spirits Are Forever With You' was released June 4th 2012 and covers the 17 month timeskip between volume 48 and 49. There are two volumes, these novels were written by a separate author from the other 3.

Forum discussion

Another Discussion.

'The Death Save The Strawberry' focuses on the same time period, but has a focus on Rukia and is written by the author of the first two books.

Yet another Forum Discussion

It's arguable if the light novels are canon or not, seeing as they were not written by bleach's mangaka, but there is no evidence to suggest that they are not.