Salt to the Sea// Ruta Sepetys

 

Hey June! 🌞

Coming up next for July is A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, by Holly Jackson. We have several copies on the way, but just in case you don't need a copy and you haven't already let me know, would you please leave me a quick note in the comments below so we can keep the call list updated? Thank you for your help! 

 

To the book!

 

While the Titanic and Lusitania are both well-documented disasters, the single greatest tragedy in maritime history is the little-known January 30, 1945 sinking in the Baltic Sea by a Soviet submarine of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise liner that was supposed to ferry wartime personnel and refugees to safety from the advancing Red Army. The ship was overcrowded with more than 10,500 passengers — the intended capacity was approximately 1,800 — and more than 9,000 people, including 5,000 children, lost their lives.                                                                                                                                              

Follow four fictionalized but historically accurate voices to convey the real-life tragedy. Joana, a Lithuanian with nursing experience; Florian, a Prussian soldier fleeing the Nazis with stolen treasure; and Emilia, a Polish girl close to the end of her pregnancy, converge on their escape journeys as Russian troops advance; each will eventually meet Albert, a Nazi peon with delusions of grandeur, assigned to the Gustloff decks. 

I'd say this book was unanimously very well received, and even those that were less enthusiastic, still weren't disappointed that they'd read it. We all really liked Sepety's writing, appreciated the shorter chapters, and found it a quick, easy read with a nice ending. We didn't think it read like your average Young Adult book (predictable), and we liked that~ we'd read more of her, some of us already have.

If I had to scratch around for some criticisms, they would be that the book felt like it tended to drag in places, and even though we like the shorter chapters, and were able to keep the ample characters straight, we wondered if all the hopping around made it tricky to really deeply connect with any of the personalities. We felt like we'll remember more about the Wilhelm Gustoff sinking, and 8,000 lives lost, than we will anything about the characters depicted. Also, with all of those good notions listed above aside, it's still a World War II book, and a good handful of us are becoming ever so weary of reading about war... even in the YA market.

 

How did Salt to the Sea leave you? Let us know in the comments below! 👇

 

Did you love Salt to the Sea? Fans of the book also enjoyed, Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi, The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, by Kristin Harmel, and The River is Waiting, by Wally Lamb. All of these titles are available within the Viking Library System~ reserve your copy today!    

 

The votes are in!

Would we recommend this to a friend to read?  Yes

 
Would we recommend this to another book club for discussion?  Yes

                                                                                                                                             Rate the book 1-5 stars, with 1 being the lowest rating:  4 stars