Book #16 - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I was back to the young adult genre for this book, but this was not as easy of a read as I would have thought. This book is about a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany after being abandoned by her mother and raised by foster parents. She steals a book from her brother's gravesite when he dies on the way to the foster family, and so begins her journey through learning to read and learning to trust again. The entire story is told through the narration of death, who takes an interest in the girl through his various distant sightings of her in his day to day work. The combination of the narration by death, the well written characters, and the girl's tenacious will to survive make this a fascinating book. I was tearing up at the end while finishing this book at work, with my boss watching ESPN in the break room with me (he was totally oblivious to my suffering, ha!). This one really tugged at the heartstrings, but I would recommend it.