The Book Thief (second blog)

              As I have continued reading The Book Thief, I have noticed that it uses a lot of foreshadowing. The foreshadowing shows that the book will most likely not have a happy ending. I think the author wanted to use foreshadowing and a sad ending to show the devastating effects that war has on people, even just citizens of a country at war. The sad foreshadowing shows how hopeless life was during that time period. The book takes place in Nazi Germany during World War II. Liesel's family is secretly against Hitler and the Nazi Party, but that has to be kept very secret. They are also hiding a Jew in their house at the part where I am in the book, so I'm kind of scared to see how that will turn out. The book does a great job of blending a story with historical information and it's very interesting to read. I would recommend this book to everyone.

The Book Thief

               The Book Thief is written by Markus Zusak. It takes place in Europe during the Holocaust. So far, the book is a bit confusing but it is very good. After reading it for a short time, I realized that the book is narrated by Death. I thought this was really weird but also a really cool and unique way to tell the story. Since there was a lot of death during this time period, it makes sense to narrate the story in this way. The story is about is a young girl named Liesel Meminger, aka, the Book Thief. Her brother dies when she is young and Death comes to take his soul. I don't know if the book ever comes out and says that the narrator is Death, but it becomes evident because the narrator talks about how nobody sees him and he comes and takes souls from dead bodies. That sounds pretty creepy but it's not really that weird in the book. So far, I think this book is pretty good and I'm excited to keep reading it.

If I Stay

      In If I Stay, the story quickly gets into the action. After giving a basic introduction about Mia's life, the family gets into a car accident. For the rest of the book, as far as I have read at least, Mia is outside of her body in between life and death. In order to make up for a lack of background information of Mia's life, the story goes into flashbacks about her experiences as she reflects on her life. I really like this because I hate reading long, boring introductions of character's lives. This way, her past experiences are incorporated into the story in a way that makes sense with what's currently going on. I think it would be interesting to try writing a story that uses flashbacks.

The Body Finder (second blog)

               I didn't agree with some of the things the author has done in this story. In the story, the main character, Violet, can sense dead bodies and she can sense an imprint of death on people who have murdered. She found the killer who had been murdering girls in the area she lived in using that ability. She told her uncle, who is a cop, and then the man was arrested just because Violet said he was the killer. This is completely unrealistic though, because if he was going to arrest someone, he would need probable cause. His reasoning couldn't just be that his niece said it was him when she hasn't proven her ability is reliable to the other police and she has no solid evidence. There was another choice the author made that I didn't like. After the killer was arrested and proven guilty, there was a plot twist where the killer had an accomplice. While there isn't anything wrong with a plot twist like this, it didn't make any sense for it to have happened. There wasn't any "a-ha" moment where details from the past in the story all add up to make the plot twist come together and make sense. It felt like a random out-of-place piece of information that the author decided to slap into the book to carry the story along.

The Body Finder

   In The Body Finder, there are parallel chapters. The majority of the chapters are from the point of view of Violet, the main character. A few of the chapters are from the point of view of the murderer. There was a chapter that ended with Violet walking alone at night, and then in the next chapter, the murderer saw a girl walking alone at night. The murderer drove his car up by the girl and saw that the girl was crying, and he offered to give her a ride home. She got in the car at the end of that chapter. The next chapter was from Violet's point of view. She was crying and a guy drove up next to her. This created a very suspenseful scene, because that led me to believe that it was the murderer about to kidnap Violet. It turned out to be Violet's friend Jay, and he gave her a ride home. This made me wonder if there was going to be a plot twist where you find out that Jay is actually the murderer, although that scene was most likely just for suspense. It's highly unlikely that Jay would be the murderer, but I am excited to see how the rest of the story turns out.