The Book Thief

Enjoyable overall, but not as amazing as I was lead to believe. While I appreciate the descriptions of Liesel's adventures, I never felt particularly drawn in. Some of the characters were sympathetic and represented another way, the touching incidents in the story would probably have affected me quite strongly. The problem I had was the structure of the book - Death's foreshadowing (or stronger) reinforced the fact that I was being told a story - breaking my immersion.
Second, throughout the book, German words were inserted in the English text. This is a pet peeve of mine - if everyone's really speaking German and the words are "translated" for the reader, there's no need to insert German and explain the words right away. This sort of thing shows up everywhere, and it's very distracting.
Worst was the way in which Death's interjections appeared - the bold paragraphs had the same effect as a splash of cold water - jarring me out of the story. As the book progressed, these intrusions became less of a problem, but the damage had been done.