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This book was amazingly well-written. I thought the story-telling was masterfully done, the main character was a great role model for girls everywhere, and all of the characters seemed like people to me. And yet... Although it had good characters, and great writing, and certainly wrings the heart, it was lacking something for me. I finished it and went, "My God, that was horrifyingly sad. Poor... everyone!" And then i went on with my day just the same, aside from feeling emotionally wiped-out. As good as it was, I would have liked it to leave me thinking. Everything that it had to say - and it said a lot of good things, about the Germans being people too, and about the power of words - it said pretty straightforwardly. There were no untied thoughts at the end for me to fiddle around with and think about. I never thought I would complain about this, but I felt like it all tied up too neatly. I would have loved this book six or seven years ago, back when I could spend all evening breaking my heart over Sirius Black and James Potter bullying poor Severus Snape, but at this point I demand a little bit more from my books, and although a lot of people want to say that this book doesn't deserve the YA rating, for me it definitely does. This book does a spectacular job of making people feel - definitely five stars on that count. Six if i had them - and the writing is wonderfully jagged and the structure (and narrator) thoughtful and well-chosen - they get five stars too - but I wanted my ideas hidden deeper, where I could dig them out, so as a purely personal preference, this book only gets three stars, although it probably deserves five, if only I were less exacting from my literature.