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This book is a must-read! It will hit you in the feels, and you will not be able to put it down! Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys is so amazing! This book is full of hope, worry, and has characters that will pull at your heartstrings! Salt to the Sea is a fantastic story that follows four people during Nazi Germany trying to survive. They aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, one of the most looked over and undocumented disasters in maritime history. It is a little bloody with some violence.
Ruta Sepetys did an amazing job with this book! I cannot give her enough praise. I love the way that this book was set up. As Salt to the Sea goes on, Ruta reveals more and more details of the characters, and some of it was actually quite surprising. I loved that this wasn’t our usual Nazi Germany story where we focused on the Holocaust or Jews, but we read different European people and watched them struggling to stay alive. It’s crazy that even though these are not real stories, these things actually happened to people.
Pros
The chapters are at most three pages, so it was really easy to devour the book! We have four POVs, which made kept making me want to continue reading as well! I read it in about two days! It’s so captivating! Everything that happens to the characters will hit you in some sort of way. I was so worried about some of the characters and knew other characters would be fine! I loved that everything in the book was told by multiple points of view; it really helped me understand what exactly was going on in the Salt to the Sea! The writing made it so easy to follow along and connect with the characters. Every chapter ends on a cliffhanger, and I just want to keep reading!
Cons
Since the chapters were so short, at the beginning of the book, I was a little confused. I was trying to figure out and get to know the characters, as well as trying to figure out what was going on in the book. It ended up working out, and in the end, I loved it. Another thing I would have liked more information in the end. We had a letter, but that was about it. I would have liked to see their reaction to the end of the war or know what happened with their families. It also seemed like the characters had the same voice, I would have liked to have more of a difference in their voice.
Final Thoughts
All in all, This was a great book! I highly recommend this book to everyone! Salt to the Sea is so inspiring and will be beloved for a long time! It’s a perfect book if you want a quick read, a heartfelt story, something to make you cry, or if you just want some history. Ruta Sepetys is a fantastic writer and knocked it out of the park with the book.
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