Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a terrible, terrible book. Just really, really awful. The one thing you have to give Mr. Zusak credit for is divining perfectly the recipe for a bestseller. As far as I can tell, it goes something like this. 1) Pick the biggest, most gut-wrenchingly painful shared tragedy in recent Western history: Nazi Germany. Never mind that World War II fiction has been done to death. 2) Pick the most instantly pitiable character in literary history for your protagonist, in the vein of Cinderella or Oliver Twist or Annie: an orphan. 3) Insert details that any reader will identify with: obsessions with reading, trying to fit in, adolescent struggles. 4) Fill in every cliche you can think of: mean stepmother, hidden Jew in the Holocaust, "complicated" friendship/romance with boy next door. 5) Mask the lack of content with stupidly forced, faux-pretentious language throughout, and end every single chapter with a choppy series of simple sentences meant to inject drama into a book that drags on faaaaar toooooo looooong. This gives the reader the impression that they're reading something they should love, even though it's anything but. From its overwrought beginning to its sloppily tragic ending, this book trots out just about every hackneyed trick imaginable. Please, read something else.