This is a unflinching account of a young Lithuanian girl who, along with her brother and mother, are displaced to work camps by the Soviet Stalin regime in 1941. I feel deeply ashamed I never knew this part of our world history - a country's secret sorrow buried in the shadow of the Jewish holocaust. The cruelty that humankind is capable of just leaves me speechless. The subject matter is bleak and heart breaking but being a YA it also doesn't go too deep (and perhaps at times, not enough). Whilst the novel has an important but dark story to tell, there are moments of hope throughout - shades of grey moments that challenge what you think you know about human nature - and a sweet love story that didn't overpower the narrative. 
 An important eye-opening story.