It seems like there is hardly any need for yet another review about this well-known classic of modern American literature, yet the late Harper Lee deserves all the acclaim imaginable for her masterpiece. Beloved by millions of enthusiastic readers and despised by only few, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is definitely a book everyone, if reader or non-reader, has at least heard of. I began to read this book the day of Harper Lee's death and was immediately taken on an interesting ride through the story of American small town Maycomb, Alabama, with its unforgettable characters. It is impossible to really summarize what the novel is essentially about as it covers so many different subjects, but the blurb does fairly well with describing this as "compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, [taking] readers to the roots of human behavior--to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos". 
 Of course, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is considered to be a must-read novel for everyone, but if I had to recommend it to a specific audience, it would be to those people who want to raise children one day. You might not agree with all the methods of education and upbringing applied here, but if Harper Lee manages to do something pretty well, it is provoking her readers to think about how to treat children on their difficult paths to learn to deal with their surrounding world. At least this is the theme which stood out most remarkably to me. 
 I got into the story almost immediately and found myself interested in the fates of Jem, Scout and Atticus Finch, but during the middle parts, I slowly began to lose interest (which cannot be attributed to Harper Lee's novel, but rather to the amount of time my exams swallowed up and prevented me from concentrating on any reading for more than a week), only to be lured into the story again at about the half point. Hence I will need to reread this novel one day, and I definitely intend to do so in order to get into the book in a more appropriate way. 
 This review only dealt with my reading experience, but there are so many reviews and thoughts about the story circulating around the internet that there is hardly any need to repeat them here. If you have not read this book yet (which is not very likely, considering the fact that it is the novel with the third-most ratings on Goodreads, only exceeded by the first Harry Potter and the first Hunger Games novel), then you should right now feel obliged to give it a try. And if you have ... then you should right now feel obliged to reread it. It is actually that simple.