So sad! I liked the original book, and this is an excellent graphic adaptation. I hope it brings in more readers. Kids (and adults) need to know the horrible things totalitarian governments do.

“Andrius, I'm...scared."He stopped and turned to me. "No. Don't be scared. Don't give them anything Lina, not even your fear.”

This is a great graphic adaptation of the novel. All the important bits were included, the drawings were nice and creative and they conveyed the emotions of the scenes, and even though the story has to be condensed I still ended up crying. This story never fails to make me cry.

Just as wonderful as the source novel!

As someone who has read the original book multiple times, I have to say that this graphic novel is one of the best adaptations I have seen. While some of the pages are a little wordy resulting in text boxes that were initially tough to follow, that would be my only real negative comment. The artwork is astounding, emotive, and fits the story. This is a must-read.

Thank you to Penguin Teen & Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.Books like Between Shades of Gray are incredibly important. This book was the first time I learned about the deportation of the Baltic States by the USSR. Sepetys masterfully depicts the horrific events in a way that makes the trauma these people faced real, while also never losing hope. This book is hard to read because it completely humanizes these experiences. There is no way to look at...

Great graphic novel adaptation as a companion to the OG novel! That being said, I don’t think I’d recommend if you haven’t read the original novel. There is a lot cut out and/or condensed, as would be expected, so some bits of characterization and things of that nature just aren’t present. Personally I think Between Shades of Gray-the comic version-easily could have been much longer. I wasn’t disappointed AT ALL since that’s kind of normal for comic adaptations, but still. I loved this as a comp...

Thanks to Edelweiss and Philomel Books for providing me with an early copy. The graphic novel comes out in October 2021.Review also posted on my my blog. “Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.” I need to start by saying I’m a big fan of Ruta Sepetys’s work. The way she approaches real historical events in her books is done with a lot of respect and consideration whilst she is also able to convey these stories through narratives o...

Nine years ago, I read the original of this book, Between Shades of Gray. I’ve always been a sucker for novels about the Holocaust, and it was refreshing, if I can use that word, to read a novel based on other atrocities that happened during WWII, not just the horrors endured by European Jews in the death camps. My family are originally from Lithuania, though they were Jewish, and therefore not really considered Lithuanian, according to what my father has told me. His family was able to escape t...

Ashes in the Snow is the movie tie-in version of Between Shades of Gray, and was a book club selection. When looking up the book, I found out they are the same book. And the original novel has a young adult graphic-novel version that I obtained from my local library. Better than skipping it altogether due to reading overload! The subject is yet another genocide-like atrocity we have never heard of. Starting in 1941, the Soviet Union, having taken over the Baltic states, deported Lithuanians, Lat...

This absolutely broke my heart. I had to stop in the middle of this graphic novel three times just because it was such a tough read. I've never read the full novel, and I still plan to, but now I know I'll need to really be ready for a tearjerker if this version, condensed down into a short graphic novel, could be so devastating! Between Shades of Gray follows a fictional story in a very real setting: a teen Lithuanian girl and her family are taken by the Soviet secret police in 1941, where they...

I thought about reading the original novel before starting this graphic novel adaptation, but the cover looked so heavy I thought I'd go for the rip the band-aid off fast approach and get it over with. And this is historical fiction about a heavy topic: the deportation of Lithuanian citizens to Siberia under Stalinism. In the midst of World War II, thousands of people are herded into boxcars and shipped across the continent for weeks under inhumane conditions. They are eventually sold into slave...

There were several pages that I had to bookmark and return to to re-read and look at. The scariest and saddest moments of the story are highlighted with the choices for color and words (dialogue and narration) that enhance the reading of the original text story that Sepetys eloquently told. The adaptation is equally riveting because of the approach Donkin, Kopka, and Livesay took with certain scenes, vantage points, colors, and the emotional lives of the characters on the page in their faces and...

I think reading this book as a graphic novel was amazing. I love how the cartoon style and the charcoal style mixed together throughout, reinforcing what the story was saying.

This story is such a powerful reminder of the power of love and hope. Happy 10th anniversary to this title that is now also in graphic format. My son married a girl from Latvia five years ago. I discovered this book in its original format while they were engaged. After five years of marriage, they have two children and live in Latvia. I went to visit them this past summer and met many who have grown up in that country. One of my daughter-in-law's grandmothers lives in Riga where the museum comme...

This story is such a powerful reminder of the power of love and hope. Happy 10th anniversary to this title that is now also in graphic format. My son married a girl from Latvia five years ago. I discovered this book in its original format while they were engaged. After five years of marriage, they have two children and live in Latvia. I went to visit them this past summer and met many who have grown up in that country. One of my daughter-in-law's grandmothers lives in Riga where the museum comme...

Felt exactly like I read "Between Shades of Gray" like I cried a big river.This book is a reminder of what happened to all Baltic people and Jewish people in World War II. We must know all their story and promise that will never happen again.

I can't believe it has been 10 years since I first read Between Shades of Gray. It was one of those books that introduced me to a new aspect of WWII and it had such a profound influence on me when I read it, one that has stayed with me ever since. Although the novel is still certainly well worth reading, so is the new graphic novel about what happened to 15-year-old Lina Vilkas and her family. Lina is arrested by the Soviet secret police or NKVD along with her mother and younger brother, Jonas,

4.5⭐️A harrowing story about a 15-year-old girl whose family is arrested by the Soviet secret police and deported from Lithuania to Siberia, where they are forced into labor and made to work as slaves in inhumane conditions. Admittedly the enslavement of Lithuanians by the Soviet Union, as well as the discrimination they continue to face even after the war, is an issue I hadn't been aware of so this was an illuminating read for me, especially since I haven't read the original novel.It's by no me...

The translation of novel to a graphic novel is always difficult. And Between Shades of Gray is far from the exception. Donkin reduces the novel into its core beats and misses the nuance of what made the original novel so impactful. I suggest reading the novel over the adaptation.