The Book Thief

I was blown away upon finishing this work, no doubt - but not in the way I expected. I didn't expect this to be amazing, don't get me wrong, but this novel just managed to cross the ‘decent' bar, and that was solely due to a few memorable scenes encountered in the middle of the book.
There was absolutely no characterization to speak of. The main characters were poorly developed, and this was compounded by the fact the language of the book is absolutely steeped in metaphor - there's a figure of speech every two lines or so. Half of the book contents could easily be trimmed.
If this was not already enough, the narrator has the excessively annoying tendency to spoil the plot many, many pages in advance. Hence, there is no buildup of tension, and the language or the characters don't come across as particularly deep (as already said above), so there's no justification of the plot being sidelined in favor of developing the characters.
The ending was also a big letdown. Not to spoil it, but suffice to say it completely broke any sense of immersion one might be preserving till then.
Keeping in mind this is a children's book, this was still a mediocre read. Would not recommend, if you've not read it already.