Between Shades of Gray
Author: Ruta Seppetys
Genre: Historical Fiction
'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 dirty and crowded train car, Lina, her mother and her younger 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 to fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions
Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously --and at a 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 survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.'
Between Shades of Gray is based around the Soviet genocide in WW2. It follows the main protagonist, Lina Vilkas, and the hardships her and her family and friends had to go through in order to survive. You learn about the Vilkas' backstory and about Lina's favourite artist and her inspiration, Edvard Munch. It's a story of hope, war, survival, friends and family.
I would recommend this book to people that a looking for a story of war, survival and family. Someone else recommended this book to me and I immediately thought I wouldn't like it but the author surprised me. Ruta Sepetys' writing is beautiful, intriguing and incredibly descriptive. Ruta has a trilogy of historical fiction novels. Her two other novels are Out of the Easy and Salt to the Sea. I give it a 10/10 because I found absolutely no flaws in this book and it was a pleasant surprise because I'm not much of a historical fiction kind of reader.
A fantastic review. I like historical fiction because it is an easy way to learn about the past. Well done for giving it a go.
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