Book 20 (from the bottom of my reading list): Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Publisher: Philomel Books
Page Count: 344
Fiction Category: Young Adult, Historical, WWII, War Crimes
Dates Read: March 23-26, 2015

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.

Review:
This book was okay. It wasn't anything special, but it was nice to read a story that occurred during WWII that was about the a displaced group of people (who weren't German or Jewish), whose experiences were driving by Stalin instead of Hitler, though Stalin was no kinder of a man. even though this was a work of fiction the research I did after reading the book it seemed like Sepetys was pretty historically accurate.  She obviously cleaned it up a bit to make this a YA novel. The most interesting part of this book was the author notes at the end where Sepetys tells the story of her husband's family experiences in Lithuania during WWII. 

I give this a 3 out of 5.

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