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A review by narcissia
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
5.0
Historical fiction is always hard for me to pick up and start reading. But I am so glad that I managed to pick this one up. And once I started it, I couldn't put it down.
Lina is a great character. All of them are great characters. Lina's mother is the thread that holds them all together. She is intelligent, compassionate, strong, and fearless. I love seeing characters like her in stories. Lina and her companions do what they can to remain strong, to seek out small hopes where they can get them, and to survive. They even find a sense of humor in their situation at various intervals. Lina spends her spare time documenting events in drawings and writings, scribbling them down on scraps of paper with whatever she can use to draw and then hiding them away so that they won't be discovered by the wrong people, hoping that her story will one day be told and that people will know what happened. I became truly invested in them and cared about what their fates would be.
The plot takes Lina and the other deportees from place to place, through various forms of transport and labor camps. Every day is a struggle for survival and hope. The pacing isn't really fast, but I found that I read it quickly and couldn't put it down because I was so interested in what would happen to Lina next and in seeing what would become of her and her loved ones. There are some sad parts, obviously, and disturbing ones. Sepetys handles the scenes which convey sadness, desperation, and horrific events without becoming unnecessarily grotesque; enough is said to put things into perspective for the reader, but it is done in a style that is matter-of-fact and not more descriptive than it needs to be in order to connect with the reader and to get the point across.
Lina is a great character. All of them are great characters. Lina's mother is the thread that holds them all together. She is intelligent, compassionate, strong, and fearless. I love seeing characters like her in stories. Lina and her companions do what they can to remain strong, to seek out small hopes where they can get them, and to survive. They even find a sense of humor in their situation at various intervals. Lina spends her spare time documenting events in drawings and writings, scribbling them down on scraps of paper with whatever she can use to draw and then hiding them away so that they won't be discovered by the wrong people, hoping that her story will one day be told and that people will know what happened. I became truly invested in them and cared about what their fates would be.
The plot takes Lina and the other deportees from place to place, through various forms of transport and labor camps. Every day is a struggle for survival and hope. The pacing isn't really fast, but I found that I read it quickly and couldn't put it down because I was so interested in what would happen to Lina next and in seeing what would become of her and her loved ones. There are some sad parts, obviously, and disturbing ones. Sepetys handles the scenes which convey sadness, desperation, and horrific events without becoming unnecessarily grotesque; enough is said to put things into perspective for the reader, but it is done in a style that is matter-of-fact and not more descriptive than it needs to be in order to connect with the reader and to get the point across.