Book Synopsis:
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. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.
My Review:
4.5/5 stars. After having read and loved two other Ruta Sepetys books in the past, I was excited to read another one. This was her first one, and probably her most well-known one, but I actually didn't like it as much as the other two. It was still great, but just not quite a five-star book. It didn't hook me and keep me quite as engaged as the other ones.
This book had a small romance. It was hard to tell exactly how old the main guy was, though. I think Lina described him as looking "around her age" or a little older, so my guess is he was about two years older. The book was obviously not about the romance, so it wasn't in it very much, but they had some cute moments that made the dark elements more lighthearted at times.
One of the "bad guys" has somewhat of a redemption, which I liked. He didn't suddenly become the most kind and heroic person, which would've been unrealistic, but he made things better for the other characters in a small way. It was hinted at throughout the novel, so it was nice when it finally paid off.
Finally, the ending was not very satisfying. There was an epilogue that showed that things turned out okay in the end, but only after 12 years of the characters still being imprisoned. Before the epilogue, the last chapter finished with everything still terrible. I didn't hate it, but I also love a hopeful ending, which this didn't have.
Content:
Language: God's name taken in vain, d*mn, b*stard, wh*re, h*ll
Sexual Content: Women take baths and male guards stare at their naked bodies, the main girl is touched inappropriately, a woman has to prostitute herself to protect her son, mentions of people making obscene gestures, characters kiss a couple times
Violence/Gore: Lots of violence and death; descriptions of blood, injuries, and dead bodies; shooting people; a woman tries to kill herself
Drugs/Alcohol: A teen character smokes cigarettes
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