Review for The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

So its general knowledge that everyone and their mothers read this novel so when I spotted it two years ago for half price I picked it up figuring it was worth the read for half price along with all the rave reviews for it. However it’s sat on my shelf untouched until only last week when I suddenly had a strange urge to read it - and it was good. I’d say over rated but over all I gave it four stars. Here’s the thing I really loved the characters and I thought the plot idea was really good and original with it being narrated by Death but boy did this book drag on. It could have easily been half its length. Easily. Which of course made it really tiresome and slow to read in some parts. I didn’t find myself wanting to get into bed and read in the evenings and I really had to slog my way through some parts. Basically when this book was good it was good and when it was bad it was bad. I didn’t love the writing either I found it a bit clunky in places. I loved the message behind this book though how humanity can be so evil and yet so compassionate and it was interesting to see how that was portrayed through each character and you got to see how differently people act in the same situation. I also loved the ending which made me decide to give it the four stars instead of the three and a half I was originally planning on. I do think this book is over rated and I cant say that I’ll be rushing out to buy another of Markus Zusak’s novels anytime soon, but I don’t regret reading it and my overall decision to give it 4 stars means that Zusak must have done something right. My Rating 4/5 stars ****