Fifty Shades of Grey is definitely the hottest thing in publishing right now, but last year around this time another was making waves in the young adult world: Between Shades of Gray.
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, is the story of a sixteen year old Lithuanian girl, Lina, whose family is torn a part by World War II. Lina and a few of her family members are sent to a work camp in Siberia. The story takes place over several years and is based on real life events from Sepetys’ family. Between Shades of Gray has received critical acclaim and starred reviews.
Currently, both James and Sepetys are on book tours. James is attracting huge crowds of people who want to hear her read from her spicy trilogy and some of them are accidentally finding them at Sepetys’ signings instead.
“The subject has come up at every high school and every bookstore I’ve been to,” Sepetys says with a laugh. However, she counts the title confusion as a positive. Many of the E L James fans who wander into her readings — most of them men, she notes — stick around and end up learning something.