Novel Review: Between Shades of Gray

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
My Rating: 4.6 of 5 stars

Goodreads Summary: Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions. Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives.

I've always leaned towards the historical fiction genre since I was a little girl; particularly since reading The Promise by Eva Schloss, an author I met in Schweinfurt, Germany in 2nd grade prior to having my tonsils removed and being in the hospital for a week, which is when I read the book.While The Promise was a true story of a young Holocaust survivor, Anne Frank's stepsister in fact; that was the moment my interest in historical novels began, especially historical fiction.

Ruta Sepetys' novel is much more than a World War II historical fiction novel, it is a unique story with a unique perspective on the war. First off, the main characters are Lithuanian, an ethnicity uncommon in most WWII novels, since the primary focus is usually Jews. Secondly, the soldiers in the novel are Soviets from Russia, not Nazis from Germany. And lastly, the languages spoken in the novel are Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian.

This phenomenally tragic novel is just another reminder of the atrocities committed during World War II and what those innocent victims/survivors had to endure.

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