YA Book Pick: Between Shades of Gray

Once a month, we choose an outstanding YA book to review. We want to spotlight books of interest to aspiring writers, as well as highlight some of our favorite books and authors!

This month's book pick is Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. While not a new book this season, it's so good I just had to write about it.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):  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.

Highlights:  When historical fiction is done well, I love it, but it's not my first choice when out hunting YA fiction. That said, I read this book over a year ago and loved it so much that I gave it out to all my colleagues at work last year  for Christmas. They may have initially been disappointed/surprised/confused when they heard the title (so close to another Shades of Gray, of course), but soon they were sold as well.

The most obvious highlight for me was that the historical story Sepetys tells here is one that is significant, but largely unwritten. We have many touching accounts of the horrors of the holocaust, but the Lithuanian purging of intellectuals hasn't had as much publicity, but is absolutely fascinating and heartbreakingly sad as well. 

I also love Sepetys depth of thematic inquiry. When I heard her speak at SCBWI after the book came out, she talked about her research, and about spending time in a gulag recreation to prepare. She said that it had scared her how close to the surface we all are to becoming savage.  Those questions about our humanity swirl around the characters, and keep bubbling up in even the setting descriptions they are so thoroughly engrained in the book as it keeps sweetly probing into what makes us human.

Notes for writers:  Sepetys does a great job of understating the atrocities she presents. While many writers might have succumbed to the temptation to be dramatic and maudlin about the horrific conditions and experiences, Sepetys fleshes out the ordinary bits of life that occur in the midst of tragedy so well that the reader is forced to see the people as more human and the situation more complex. She also includes very ordinary thoughts on love and being a teenager in the midst of darker and harder questions, a balance that's difficult to get right, and that she nails.

A good read for: Fans of historical fiction (of course), but also anyone who enjoys deep thematic issues and subtle poetic writing.

Happy reading!

YA Book Pick: ELEANOR & PARK

Once a month, we choose an outstanding YA book to review. We want to spotlight books of interest to aspiring writers, as well as highlight some of our favorite books and authors!

This month's Book Pick is ELEANOR & PARK by Rainbow Rowell.

Synopsis (from Goodreads): "Bono met his wife in high school," Park says."So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers.
"I’m not kidding," he says.
"You should be," she says, "we’re sixteen."
"What about Romeo and Juliet?"
"Shallow, confused, then dead."
''I love you," Park says.
"Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers.
"I’m not kidding," he says.
"You should be."

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, ELEANOR AND PARK is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love – and just how hard it pulled you under.

First Line: "He'd stopped trying to bring her back."

The book starts near the end of the story and then goes back to the beginning. This can be tricky to pull off, since it's often just a gimmick to hook the reader with some action so they'll stick around for a slower start. Here, though, it works well. The author keeps the beginning very short and just intriguing enough to make you wonder how this narrator got so attached to the girl he's describing. It also helps that the beginning of the story is immediately compelling and well-written all by itself.

Highlights: The author absolutely nails the feeling of being a sixteen-year-old outsider thrown into a group of unsympathetic peers. Her depiction of the careless cruelty Eleanor experiences at school was realistic and evocative, to the point where I actually had trouble reading it in places because I was so forcibly reminded of some of my own high school experiences.

The romantic relationship is also grounded in reality. The characters don't fall in insta-love--quite the opposite, actually. They forge a bond through shared interests before they start to see each other in a romantic light. When they fall in love, they fall hard... but this makes sense too. They are sixteen, after all.

Although I won't spoil it, I also really liked the ending of the book. It wasn't what I expected, but it felt very narratively satisfying and true to the characters.

Notes for Writers: The story is set in 1986, which makes it historical fiction (believe it or not, that was twenty-seven years ago!). The whole story is peppered with bits of nostalgia, from mix tapes to punk music to comic books. Although there are story reasons for the historical setting, it's also an interesting way to add an extra layer of enjoyment for older readers.

A Good Read For: Writers of YA contemporary (or near-contemporary) fiction or "issues" books.