A Novel You Simply Must Read!

A fellow writer acquaintance recommended I read Between Shades of Gray and it’s one of the best pieces of advice I have ever followed.  

When Ruta Sepetys published Between Shades of Gray she immediately had a problem in that the title was similar to that horribly written novel that also had Shades of Gray in the title. She stuck with that title for a while, then retitled it Ashes in the Snow.  Thus, the novel appears under two titles.  

This story is nothing like that horribly other novel. The story grabs you from the first line and the building tension never lets you go. Although the heroine is a fifteen-year-old girl named Lina Vilkas, the novel is completely suitable for adults as well as teens. Lina’s story begins when Stalin’s NKVD bursts into her family’s apartment in the middle of the night. Lina’s crime: her Lithuanian parents opposed the Soviet takeover of their country in 1939. The cruelty of Stalin’s regime is laid raw as Lina and her family are tossed into the Soviet gulag system and encounter one abuse after another at the hands of Stalin’s NKVD troops. Just surviving one more day becomes symbolic resistance. 

In addition to the vivid prose, the characters are real flesh and blood. The reader is introduced to seventeen-year-old Andrius Arvydas, Lina’s love interest who sneaks food to her family, the man who obsessively winds his watch, and the Jewish man whose life experiences have left him bitter about everything. The dynamics of so many different characters trying to survive provides another dimension to the story. 

This is one of those novels you must read. Please take my advice and read it. Otherwise you will miss out on one of the best modern novels out there.