I feel that I am about to risk my life by saying what I am about to say and willingly putting it on the internet for anyone to see. But I am going to anyway.
I did not like this book. At all.
I tried out going to a book club briefly (it wasn't for me, but that's another story for another time) and this was the first book I read with them. I was terrified going to that first meeting, feeling how I did for this book. The writing was clunky and belittling, the characters cliche and predictable and I found myself having to physically force my self to read every page knowing that I could in no way feel any empathy for such unrealistic portrays of people. Yes, it could be argued that The Book Thief is considered a young adult book, and therefore may lack some of the maturity that is to be expected of 'older' fiction, I think that with so many really good YA books on the market now, it is proving that younger readers can understand a story and its themes without being talked down to.
The only redeeming factor was the narration view point. I enjoyed that the story was told from the view of the personification of Death. That idea struck a cord with me.
So here I was, about to meet with a group of people that I have never met, with nothing but negative thoughts about a book that the entire world seems to have loved - you can imagine how worried I was about that. It was relief to no end, to hear these eight other people say the same things that I had been thinking all month.
Unsurprisingly, I only gave this one out of five stars.
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