History Literature / BetweenShadesOfGrey

''Between Shades of Grey'' is a 2011 YoungAdult HistoricalFiction book and the debut novel of Creator/RutaSepetys. It follows the Stalinist repressions of the mid-20th century and follows the life of Lina as she is deported from her native Lithuania with her mother and younger brother and the journey they take to a labor-camp in Siberia.

The book is heavily based on stories that Ms. Sepetys heard from survivors of the Baltic Genocide while visiting relatives in Siberia. It is related to and set in the same universe as her other novel, Literature/SaltToTheSea.

* {{Squick}}: The scene in which a corpse's inner organs are being eaten by foxes.

* HistoricalFiction: Set during the little-known Baltic Genocide of WWII.

* {{Adorkable}}: Kostas. In one story Elena was telling Lina, she tells her how he was trying to talk to her, and ended up falling out of a tree and breaking his arm.

* AnimalMotifs: the commander is compared to a snake when Lina is drawing him.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone?: Janina's mother after she realizes she has just tried to choke her own daughter.

* Squick: The scene in which a corpse's inner organs are being eaten by foxes.
* WhatTheHellHero?: Lina accusing Andrius' mother of cooperating with the Russians after seeing her in their cabin.

* Adorkable: Kostas. In one story Elena was telling Lina, she tells her how he was trying to talk to her, and ended up falling out of a tree and breaking his arm.
* AngerBornOutOf Worry: Lina's father when he finds out she drew mocking pictures of Stalin showing her father and his friends throwing paper airplanes at Stalin in a clown suit. Given that this is Soviet Russia in the 1940s, Lina would've endangered herself heavily.

* AmbiguousFate: We never truly learn what happens to Lina's father, although he likely dies in prison or before he ever gets there.

* Foil: Elena and Mr. Stalas. While Elena is hopeful, understanding and kind, Mr. Stalas is cynical, standoffish, and says whatever is on his mind, no matter how foul.
* Foreshadowing: The commander yelling at Kretsky. While it's dismissed in the book, later it's revealed that Nikolai's maternal relatives are in a camp in Kolyma, and he was stationed to go there. He wanted to help them, however, he is not allowed to since he had helped Lina's mother.

* MyGod,WhatHaveIDone?: Janina's mother after she realizes she has just tried to choke her own daughter.

* WhatTheHell,Hero?: Lina accusing Andrius' mother of cooperating with the Russians after seeing her in their cabin.
* WiseBeyondTheirYears: Most of the kids and adolescents in the book. Lina was a regular teenage girl who liked hanging out with her cousin and crushing on boys, but due to her situation, she must keep her family alive and have enough perseverance to hope one day she's going to return to her homeland. Jonah, who's only eleven years old, often acts more like a moody adolescent than

* GoodAllAlong: Kretsky. While he laughs and spits in Lina's face and seems to be just as terrible as all the other NKVD officers, he is actually not. When the women were forced to stand naked and gawked at, he turned his back. When Elena is getting sexually harrassed, he tells the others the stop and even drives her back. He also lets Lina steal wood at the end.

* MoralEventHorizon: Andrius' mother being forced to be a prostitute for the people that killed her husband, all to make sure they don't kill her son. Andrius feels extremely guilty over this, even admitting to Lina that he feels like killing himself just so his mother doesn't have to suffer. Ona and her daughter being forced onto a cattle train to a labor camp all because the Soviet government thinks of her and her barely minutes old baby as enemies just because of her husband. Even worse when she's forced to throw her child on the tracks to be crushed because the baby never got enough nutrition.

* NightmareFuel: the scene in which one of the NKVD forces the laborers to jump into a hole and dumps dirt onto them as a way to threaten them to sign the papers.
* PunchClockVillain: Nikolai Kretsky. He's an NKVD agent, but while most of them are sadistic and cruel to the captives, he struggles with the immorality what he does and does help them somewhat.

* Happily Married: Elena and Kostas

* Kick The Dog: Ivanov. He constantly laughs at the prisoners' misery, and despite them laboring and getting very little food in exchange, he calls them lazy and ungrateful pigs. Even worse when he laughs at Lina after she lost her mother and when he finds out several people died after getting trapped in a hut and frozen to death.
* Nightmare Fuel: the scene in which one of the NKVD forces the laborers to jump into a hole and dumps dirt onto them as a way to threaten them to sign the papers.

* What The Hell, Hero?: Lina accusing Andrius' mother of cooperating with the Russians after seeing her in their cabin.

* BittersweetEnding: In the end, Lina and Andrius survive and end up together, but they are scarred and shocked by their experiences and have lost years of their lives in a living hell, while many of the people they cared about did not make it, including Lina's own mother. Not to mention that Lithuania will remain under Soviet control for decades to come.

* Jerkass Woobie: The grumpy mother on the train. While she's quite a *Jerkass for not letting people use her spot for a little moment just to urinate and being rude in general, one can't help but feel bad for her when she chooses to sign the papers, seeing it as her only choice.

* NoPeriodsPeriod: Averted. Lina stops menstruating due to losing too much body fat in the labor camp. It is never stated whether her periods return or when- though it is not mentioned that she and Andrius had children in the future.

* TimeCapsule: Lina creates one as a record of her experiences, since she cannot discuss them. The book ends with it being found by a construction crew.

''Between Shades of Grey'' is a 2011 YoungAdult HistorialFiction book and the debut novel of Creator/RutaSepetys. It follows the Stalinist repressions of the mid-20th century and follows the life of Lina as she is deported from her native Lithuania with her mother and younger brother and the journey they take to a labor-camp in Siberia.