The Book Thief in Pop Sugar's Annual Ultimate Reading Challenge

Sep 13, 2013 Sarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult

I often find book narrated by death to be a little cliche. I fell in love with this book and it is definitely in the books that made me cry. It allows you to see what living in Nazi Germany was like. It may be a work of fiction but it gives you insight from a little girl and deaths point of view.

You know that a book like this is probably not going to have a happy ending but be prepared for your heart to be ripped out. You will laugh and cry and when it's all over reflect on how awful it must ha ...more

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Aug 14, 2015 Sue Thompson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-ultimate-favourites, historical-fiction, will-send-recommendations, kindle

This is a truly fantastic book and thoroughly deserves its place amongst the many great books lists that appear all over the internet and is most certainly a modern classic. I don’t do spoilers in my reviews and deliberately give as little away about the storyline as I possibly can however I feel the need to explain about the beginning: This was one of those books which I started, decided I couldn’t possibly read it, put it away, finally decided to try again a few years later and ended up loving This is a truly fantastic book and thoroughly deserves its place amongst the many great books lists that appear all over the internet and is most certainly a modern classic. I don’t do spoilers in my reviews and deliberately give as little away about the storyline as I possibly can however I feel the need to explain about the beginning: This was one of those books which I started, decided I couldn’t possibly read it, put it away, finally decided to try again a few years later and ended up loving it to the point I gave it 5 stars. I think it was the death concept which confused me and I know this has had a similar effect on a lot of others. On my first attempt I didn’t realise that it was death speaking, however the second time I had come to realise this and made it so much easier to get past the initial part and into the story itself.

My other main thought about this book is that it’s a YA book and as rule I don’t do YA. In my head I see YA books as unchallenging, focussing primarily on school, young romance or impossibly attractive people on an adventure, waving a sword and “everything works out well in the end” – This book proved all of my pre-existing ideas wrong. Yes some parts of it are quite ”young” but there are some very tough, almost “grown up” themes in here. It was well written and I genuinely developed feelings (good or bad) towards the characters, found myself desperate to get to the next page hoping everything would actually work out well in the end. A great page turner and it had me on the edge of my seat a few times.

My husband decided to play music as I was reading the latter part of this book, the timing couldn’t have been worse (or better, I still can’t decide which). Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” came on and that combined with the ending of this book had me in tears the music and the story seemed to match perfectly and turned me into a sobbing wreck. I’m not one for crying at books but this one did it (assisted by Metallica), a truly great ending, well written and very emotive. ...more

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Jul 10, 2015 Tami Maldonado rated it it was amazing

Best book I've read this year!
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Dec 18, 2013 Erica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2014-books

This is a wonderful book. It's books like this one that make me appreciate the written word. I was so drawn into the story and became so emotionally invested with the characters. I love that and that is why I read books! ...more

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