Actual rating: 4.5 stars

As soon as I saw this video, I knew I had to read this novel. Between Shades of Gray isn't the type of book I'd normally read, but I'm extremely glad that I decided to read it.

Lina is a very strong and courageous character. Despite the situation Lina is placed in at the young age of fifteen, she audaciously chooses to write about the terrible cruelties the Soviets are doing to those around her as well as her family and herself. Lina is an artist, and she uses this talent More...

Exactly a year before, the Soviets have begun moving troops over the borders into the country. Then, in August, Lithuania was officially annexed into the Soviet Union. When I complained at the dinner table, Papa yelled at me and told me to never, ever say anything derogatory about the Soviets. He sent me to my room. I didn’t say anything out loud after that. But I thought about it a lot.

Despite her father’s caution, 15-year-old Lena Vilkas, her 10-year-old brother Jonas and their mother Elena ar More...

'Now my heart sank into my stomach where the bile began to chew it.'



Step on my heart, cut it wide open, rub it with salt and feed it to the sharks.. Or just make me read this book, because this is how it feels like reading this story.

How can I call “wonderful” a book full of so many horrors?
...But I will, because it really is, and what pains me the most is that it's all true, that this is a really tiny part of the darkest piece of our history as human beings.
You thought this was repugnant?!
Wel More...

Ruta Sepetys wrote a courageous story that has been overlooked for quite some time. I can only imagine how hard it is to write with such frankness but to convey through the grimness that there is love and hope, no matter how small it is; it's still there.

Lina is our protagonist who lives in Lithuania in the 1940's and one night the NKVD (widely known later as the KGB) bust through her family's home and take her mom, little brother, and herself to an unknown location. Her father has been taken ea More...

Let me justify my seemingly harsh rating. First things first, let me provide you with some (probably not necessitated) background into my interest in this book: I am an avid studier of Lithuanian history. I have rigorously researched this time period prior to this book's creation, thus I was absolutely overjoyed when I got wind of its publishing. It's about time that a "young adult" book chronicled the heinous acts of human evil that the Soviet Union committed against the Baltic peoples.

This bo More...

Such a small book with such an astounding story inside.

I can't believe I always used to say that historic fiction is boring – I think I've just read the wrong books. This novel had such a powerful message and together with its rich and vivid characters, it made even the bleakest setting shine. Between Shades of Gray has such a sad and infuriating background – telling the story of a Lithuanian family captured and deported to Siberia by the Soviets in the early 1940s – but its prose and its heroi More...

I'll admit it. I was sort of afraid to read this book. Well.... not really afraid, but just watching the video about the book had me bawling, and I was afraid to be in that set of mind again. I don't know about you, but books can tend to evoke strong emotions with me that will last for days... weeks, months even.

I wish I hadn't waited for so long. Unfortunately I don't think my review will do this novel justice.

I don't want to say that this book wasn't heartbreaking or that watching the disturbi More...

Um... so I'm a bit torn on this one but I'm going to rate it 3.5 stars. I think what made it worse was all the bloody hype (like with Matched) that made me think this was going to blow my mind and it kind of just, well, didn't.

It was an interesting history lesson. My knowledge of Soviet activities was previously more political than social and anything I did know of the more personal impact on people's lives was what I'd gained from German museums telling the story of the Berlin wall. It's true More...

Between Shades of Gray is the type of novel you need to mentally prepare yourself to read. If you don't, you'll probably find yourself like me, choking up within the first few pages itself. Yet, as the story wears on, you learn to breathe again and slowly, gently, carefully, Sepetys weaves this heart-breaking tale of loss, love, and hope.

What makes Between Shades of Gray such a phenomenal read is the mere fact that it is based off of truth. Sepetys has put an immense amount of research into her More...

Between Shades of Gray is a very important story. It's a story that needs to be told. These people and what they lost needs to be remembered.

I wasn't entirely sure how to rate this. While being a very important book, one that I did connect with emotionally, it didn't quite hit me the same way other books set during World War 2 have. During the official book trailer the author jokes about the original book being so dark that it required a lot of revisions, that originally it was even darker than More...

"I look for characters that may not be classically beautiful, but have a beautiful capacity to love." - Ruta Sepetys

BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY centres around a story, in which the Baltic countries of: Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania that were wiped of the map. A genocide on such a scale that the people were close to forgotten, nearly. You see, Stalin was sneaky in how he went about things. People were taken without warning. They had no time to tell loved ones where they were being taken and very few m More...

"Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth?
That morning, my brother´s was worth a pocket watch."

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I´VE EVER READ!
Harsh, beautiful, sad, inspiring and utterly heart-breaking.
This story really moved me. When someone mentions World War II, we usually just think of what the Nazis and Hitler did but we should remember that the Soviets were just as bad.

Everyone who read and liked Anne Frank´s Diary should pick this book up.
Between Shades of Gray is powerful book and you More...

3.5 stars

For such a heavy subject matter, I found most of this book to be a little... light. I can appreciate Sepetys attempt to bring some of the USSR's atrocities to YA, to help the youth of today relate to the youth in Stalin's day, to tell the mostly untold story of the Baltic countries during WWII, but it felt a little too much like putting the youth from today back in a history lesson (there was something modern about it that I can't quite put my finger on), so there was a little bit of a More...

Powerful.

I don’t think I put it down once I actually got started. It’s got the best and the worst of humanity, but it was the best that had me breathing deep. Elena, in particular stands foremost in my mind. That she clung to hope through every single thing they went through, but what was even was more remarkable was what a good soul she was. A loving mother, without a doubt but it was her treatment of others that sticks out. Forgiving and thoughtful of possibilities seem the most apt descript More...

This is a beautiful, but heartbreaking story of a teenage girl who is dragged from her home in the middle of the night and deported to Siberia.

I read this in one afternoon. It was so well written and compelling that I needed to know what happened. I needed to know whether Lina and her brother and her mother made it through.

I could really identify with the characters in this story. They were all incredibly real and honest, and even when I disliked them, I felt that they could have easily steppe More...

Hotovo. A normálně se těším, až si to po sobě přečtu, tak moc je to dobrý.

Also found here: http://theninjareader.tumblr.com/post...

It's a truth universally acknowledged that I rate books high if they make me cry. That can indicate a lot of things to a lot of different people, but let me tell you here and now: This is NOT a tear-jerker.

What it is, in fact, is the fictional story of a fifteen year old Lithuanian girl, Lina, whose family is arrested by the NKVD in 1941 and deported to a worker's camp in Siberia. It's a story of survival, and war, and the horrible trials More...

Hope
Survival
Love
Courage

These are the words that come to mind when I think of Lina and her family in Between Shades of Gray

Many books have been written about the rain of terror that both Hitler and Stalin bestowed upon Europe and the world. It’s a time in the worlds past that we would like to push under a rug and forget about. We’d like to believe that those days are over, that we’d never let something like ‘that’ happen again. I say it’s our duty to read and understand about WWII because it can More...

Holy anti-depressants, Batman.

War is hell. This book makes this statement perfectly clear, and provides the audience with a new look into an old horror story: World War II. Coming from America, I sadly had no idea what Stalin had done to the Baltic countries, and reading about these voiceless victims of another fanatic dictator spreading fear and hate into conquered countries.

Between Shades of Grey is not for the light hearted. The suffering and the pain rips right through the reader from the s More...

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

I don’t read a lot of straight-up historical fiction. When I do, it’s often because I have to, and I’m usually surly about it. There are some historical fiction novels that I count among the best books I’ve ever read (Catherine Jinks’ quirky Pagan Chronicles come to mind) but generally, any time I pick up historical fiction, I’m predisposed to go “meh”. I’m harder on the genre in general, and that may partly explain why I can only give this novel 3.5 stars. I didn’t enjoy More...

I just wanted to write a few words on this review now. I will write more later but I have to get some of my feelings out on this book now. This book is amazing. The thing that is most amazing to me is that I have never heard this story. These people were so terrified about what happened to them that to this day they still have a hard time speaking about it. Maybe that is why the story is so unknown to many people. I cried for the Lithuanian people. Not because of what they went though but becau More...

My husband found this book and I just needed to read it. It doesn't come out until March of this year (2011). The cover is beautiful as well as the story. The video on her website is a great piece of the story and is amazing of how Ruta incorporated real stories into her own. I knew a lot of Stalin's rule and I too believed he was just as bad as the rest of them, if not worse. Didn't he shoot his own wife?


Anyway, the story is heartbreaking from beginning to end. I loved the epilogue and I just w More...

I'm not sure how to review this book... I think Stacia said the same thing, lol.

On one hand, I have a hard time reading books about WWII. It was such a bleak sad time, and very little happy happens. Funny, I was going to type that the whole book feels like shades of gray, very little yellow, but then I thought of the title and realized how apt that is.

I probably would have bawled my eyes out in the end, which is why it's a tear jerker, if I hadn't finished it at work. This was a beautiful, sad s More...

How not to give 5 stars to this book? This is an impossible task.

The plot describes the story of a 15-year-old girl, Lina and how his family was pulled apart by the Soviet secret police, NKVD, later denominated as the famous KGB.

Lina, her mother and his brother were forced to travel into castle cars until they reached their final destiny: Siberia.

The author described in her fist novel how Stalin had "cleaned" the Baltic region by the death of hundreds of thousand people without any distinction a More...

I was hoping to write a review for this book... but I can't. I just can't. It hurts too much.

Yet, even if I am not capable to write a review for this novel, I can still say READ IT to the most people I can. So don't read reviews about this book. Don't ask for recommendations or people's opinion about this novel. Those question and hesitation to read Between Shades of Gray is a complete waste of your time. So just READ IT. That's all you need. READ IT

★ Dazzling Reads ★ More...

This book didn't just make me tear up, it made me sob. SOB!

Beautifully written, compelling from page one. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, a tale of how even in the worst of times, human decency can still prevail.

One tiny thing--the last one fourth right up to a few pages before the end was just gut-wrenching, and the optimist in me wanted a bigger payoff for all that sadness. Still a phenomenal book though.

See more of my reviews sooner on The YA Kitten!

3.5 stars.

Just like all the reviews say, this is a story that absolutely needed to be told. When we think of atrocities committed against humankind during World War II, we think of the Holocaust, not Stalin's deportation of millions of Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and Finns in order to put them in prisons and labor camps--and eventually kill many of them. It's something lost to the wilds of history. Sepetys brings it to the forefront in her nov More...

To say that Between Shades of Gray is an emotional book would be a massive understatement. Quite frankly, I can't think of any words to describe just how incredibly powerful this book is. There have been moments in history that nobody could ever imagine being in the middle of, and the events taking place in this book are some of them. In all honesty, I didn't really know a whole awful lot about Stalin, I knew all the basic things that you'd learn about in your average history class but I don't k More...

Not that well-written, but gripping; the middle section is the best. The teen romance was a little unconvincing, but this book handled the problem of collaborating to survive better than a lot of Holocaust/Soviet lit; those who translate, or prostitute themselves, or even inform, are not wholly evil, and their captors and guards aren't either: hence the title (which is otherwise left unexplained except for the author's note). Occasionally the prose style was so stiff and the dialogue so stilted More...

"I wrote the book but, really, history wrote the story" -Ruta Sepetys

Wow...this is a difficult review to write because this was such an incredible, emotionally powerful story, I’m having a hard time finding the right words. I do want to say that Emily Klein did an OUTSTANDING job narrating this audio. I’m so glad that I chose to download the audio from Audible. Emily Klein’s narration was such that it immediately pulled me into the story and I felt like I was listening to Lina as she recounted w More...