My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Avg rating: 4.34
Genre: Historical Fiction, Young Adult, War
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. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.
My Rating: 4.0
This book really surprised me. I wasn't expecting such heavy subject matter. Pieces of history that don't get focused on at all. Tragedy and misery just outside the hands of Hitler, long forgotten lessons in history that don't get the light they deserve.
I enjoyed this book because I felt like there were good, solid lessons intertwined with honest hardships but threaded through with strands of love. Terrible conditions that people our age can't even fathom. In reading this work of fiction, with made up characters and themes of love, I learned a lot and gained opinions I wouldn't have had before. I liked the characters a lot and their will to live was outstanding. The sacrifices they made for each other, loved ones or not, were quite commendable. Even the bald man finally came around and made sure the sick children were taken care of first when a doctor finally arrived.
There were highs and lows, really low, but through it all love shined through the misery. Compassion overcame weaknesses. The epilogue was PERFECT. I loved it.
I usually don't read the extra bits at the end of a book but I'm so glad I read the interview with the author. It explained so much about the story and about what was true and what was made up. The author did a LOT of research to create this book and the stories come from family legend. I really appreciated this novel and will recommend it to certain readers.
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