Elana's Reviews > Between Shades of Gray

(Edit, July 9, 2016: I was a pretentious 16-year-old when I wrote this review, lol. I'm 21 now and I'll be going back to edit it periodically.)

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 book was certainly a proverbial "eye-opener" for those who were unfamiliar with Lithuanian history. It was an immersive, interesting book with "relatable" (my reasoning behind the quotation marks will be addressed later) characters.

But one qualm I had was the writing style. I am cognizant of the fact that this was Sepetys' debut novel, but the writing style felt almost detached to me. It was an itemization of Lina's torturous experience, as opposed to the immersive, detailed account I surmised a first person perspective would entail. In fact, the writing style did not allow me to get close enough to the characters to truly empathize with what was happening to her and her family. Even in the beginning, before most would assume that dissociation and other psychological trauma would kick in and truly prevent Lina from grasping the severity of her situation or being capable of detailing events, there were no details to attach me to her life. (view spoiler)[Even when her brother was sick, the narration did not show enough concern, anger or sadness to me. It was just another slew of barely described events that transpired. Additionally, I felt nearly nothing when her mother passed away; I was expecting to sob, as I am a very emotional, empathetic person, but the narration was so detached that it was difficult for me to cry for very long. Instead of grieving, I just moved onto the next page. (hide spoiler)] This narration style made basically every character flat to me, with no substance or meaning to me. The plot was moved forward by dialogue as opposed to narration, which provided no true insight into Lina's deepest emotions, feelings and thoughts. Thus, I felt as if the book would have fared better with a harsh critic such as myself if it were in third person objective. That way, it would have been safe to abstain from revealing Lina's thoughts, as opposed to pretty much avoiding them in favor of utilizing dialogue to encapsulate her feelings.

Additionally, the gratuitous usage of capital letters, multiple exclamation points and italicized text to represent flashbacks was irritating; those are the signs of drafting stages to me. While it is most likely just personal preference, I am very stringent upon the utilization of capital letters. To me, they are used solely when merely italicizing dialogue or a word just isn't enough to express how crucial the idea is. Capitalizing words on basically every page is distracting and, honestly, makes me think of an elementary school child writing a story sans the knowledge of using italics. I know I am being very harsh. Also, the representation of long flashbacks via italics was unnecessary. Sure, for a truncated flashback (view spoiler)[(such as the repeated one with the "return" of Lina's father at the end) (hide spoiler)] this would have been fine, but some of these flashbacks were multiple, consecutive pages. It was an annoyance to the eyes and was useless, as Sepetys could have opted to make those flashbacks into separate chapters, so long as Lina provided insight into their being flashbacks.

My final grievance lies in the ending; it seemed very abrupt. (view spoiler)[We were never told the fate of a few of Lina's compatriots, and it seemed as if one year's account of Lina's experience was not enough to truly encompass what happened (hide spoiler)]. It was almost as if Sepetys has simply run out of ideas and decided to end it there. However, despite my harsh review, this book was definitely powerful and deeply moving. I did enjoy it, cry over it, and store it on my bookshelf for future rereading, but it did not touch me in the way I initially assumed it would. I would recommend this book to my friends solely because I want them to read an interesting account of the Lithuanian deportations as opposed to the itemized history books I read myself, but that would be the only reason. It is not on a young adult's reading level, despite it being a very adult-themed book; it is much, much simpler.