Blood on my Hands

My second book is “Blood on my Hands”, written by Tod Strasser. He is born 1950 in the USA and a famous writer, his most popular book is the Wave. “Blood on my Hands” is a mystery story about a murder.

The book is about a girl named Callie who got accused for murder. In the beginning at high school party, Katherine is missing. While everyone is looking for her, Callie sees her at the baseball field on the ground. She sees a knife wedged into her side and thinks it must be faked, but it isn’t. Callie realizes that after she pulls out the knife. When people see this they snapped a picture of it. She is now wanted and on the run. Many questions are asked, for example if it has actually been Callie, who murdered Katherine, if anybody planed it with her and where Callie is.

I liked the first book I read, “The Book Thief”, more, because it’s better written. “Blood on my Hands” is a book for girls, I think.

To conclude, the story of the book is quite good, but the implementation isn’t. It’s sometimes really boring and especially in the end foreseeable. I would recommend it to girls between 14 and 16 years.

The Book Thief

The first book I have to read is called “the Book Thief” and it’s written by Markus Zusak, an author from Australia. He was born 1975 and he got inspired to this book by his German mother. She told him stories about the Nazis during the Second World War; she has been living in Munich at this time.

I personally like the book, because history of this time is interesting and the writing-style of Zusak is also not that bad.

The story of “The Book Thief” is narrated by the Death, which is not really pleased with his part. The story is about Liesel Meminger, she is 9 years old and adopted by the Hubermann family, because her real mother gave her away. On the way to her new family, her younger brother Werner dies and Liesel gets traumatized. She starts reading stolen books to forget the dark chapters of her short live. At a book burning of the Nazis, she gets the information that her parents were murdered for being Communist. After she heard that, she steals a book from the burning, but the mayor’s wife sees her. She doesn’t punish Liesel but invites her into her library.

Hans, Liesels new father, hides a Jew called Max in his house. Hans also helps a Jew in public, because of that he has to join the German Army and Max is found and taken to a concentration camp. So Liesel realized that Hitler is primarily responsible for the death of her parents and her best friend Max.

As I said in the first paragraph, the idea behind the book is taken from Zusak out of stories his mother narrated to him. It shows how crewel the Nazis have been.

I can’t find any strengths and weaknesses in the book, because I think it’s well written, but normally I don’t read books about this subject.

To conclude, “The Book Thief” a quite interesting book. It’s sometimes amusing, sometimes sad, informative and entertaining, so I would recommend it to others.