** spoiler alert ** 
 I'll admit, when I first started this book, it went really slow for me and despite my friend's recommendations, I was starting to doubt that this was going to be a good book. How wrong I was. I cried like a baby towards the ending. Having studied world history in secondary school and researched on the Holocaust itself, I am well aware of German atrocities against the Jews. The fact that human beings could do such horrible things to others of their kind still eludes me. To read this book and learn that there were still, fictional and otherwise, Germans who, against all odds, helped save Jews, gives me hope and doesn't make me feel so sad about the war. 
 I was deeply saddened by the ending, where Liesel's foster parents, best friend Rudy and his entire family, were killed in an air raid. Even though Death had warned that Rudy was going to die, I felt that it was so unjustified that such good people would die like that. 
 I was so happy to read that Liesel and Max were later reunited. Their friendship was so enduring and it really gave the story its backbone. 
 I liked that Death was the narrator. We get to see that he isn't entirely callous. There is a kindness to him. He talks about carrying children in his arms and at the ending, where Rudy's family is killed, he talks about kissing the young children. I think that was when I just started bawling. 
 Death's last line, "I am haunted by humans", was just so powerful and poetic. Human beings are capable of such cruelty and brutality but they're capable of such love and kindness and endurance in the face of adversity as well and this book really showed that. I'm really glad I got to read this and my only regret was that I didn't start the book a lot earlier.