There is no shortage of great reviews for the “The Book Thief.” Just the same, I’ll pile on and add one more to the mix. “The Book Thief” is a book for readers who like a great story wrapped in great writing. What I mean by that is, if you don’t like literary devices like metaphor, simile, personification and the like, don’t read this novel.
Make no mistake; the story shines through bravely, but Markus Zusak is the master of these literary devices among others, and he weaves them throughout. Sometimes there’s just story and sometimes, beautiful prose it seems for beauty’s sake, and sometimes the two are combined. Zusak tells a story, three years in the making, of foster girl, Leisel Meminger. The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany 1939, that’s right, smack dab in middle of the holocaust. Through Zucac’s talented pen we get to see what this time must have looked and felt like through the expecting eyes of an innocent, brave, and resourceful girl.
If you’re a writer looking for an authentic lesson in great literature, read “The Book Thief” but not as a page-turner, read it slowly, a section at a time. Let the experience have its way with your literary sensibilities. Unless … the spirit moves you, then forge ahead and let the words rush in. I liken “The Book Thief” to the film, “Titanic.” It’s not a book about death (although death is its narrator), but a love story at its finest, a love story about a girl and her family, a girl and her father, a girl and a boy, a girl and a book.
I give this book a solid 9/10 fist bumps. 
John Darryl Winston Blog 