How long does it take to read Between Shades of Gray?
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys takes about 6 hours 23 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 23 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1999. 348 pages, about 95,700 words. Written for children.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 38 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 23 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 59 minutes |
The page count is the median across 24 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they’ve known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin’s orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions. Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously–and at great risk–documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father’s prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives.
Subjects: Labor camps, Juvenile fiction, Fiction, Survival, History, Historical fiction
