Wow, a beautiful book. I can see how this one would invoke a either love or hate reaction. It was pretensions, it told you everything that was going to happen before it happened, it had an intricate complex structure, it was narrated by Death (similar to but slightly more poetic and haunted than Death from the Discworld novels), and so on. But wow, it worked for me.

There have been millions of books about life in the Battle of Britain, so it was nice to have something set in the same circumstances but in Munich. The Germans may have been lead by a horrible person with a powerful subset of the population pushing along the culture and policies of aggression and hatred, but in the midst of that there is a general population and good and kind-hearted people who are caught in that. Hiding a Jew in your basement is a serious proposition, in a place where any sign of sympathy towards Jewish people could leave you in a very dangerous position.

There were many beautiful touches, such as the hand painted book painted over the pages of Mein Kampf. After reading this, I'm surprised it is a young adult book. I can see how there are many elements that lend itself to that audience, a young protagonist, lots of explanations of complex words, a complex narrative structure which helps lead you through complex subject matter in a gentle way, but even though it remains challenging for adult readers.