3.5 ⭐️s
For the first 7/8 of this book I loved it. That last 1/8 hit and it went from a hard 5 to barely above a 3. I really loved the characters and how human Doerr portrayed them. No one was villainized with a vague stroke. Of course there are Nazis and they are very much in the wrong. But Doerr reminds us that unfortunately they are just as human as those they sought to exterminate. The end just felt so lackluster for what he‘d built up to.