Review: Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

This is a piece of historical fiction set against the background of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff,  a ship carrying over 10,000 refugees, wounded soldiers and crew. The ship set out from Gotenhafen, now known as Gdynia, in present-day Poland at the end of January 1945. At the time the city was under German control and it was used as a naval base. At the end of the war it became a corralling point for refugees trying to escape the advancing Russian army and gain passage on a ship to safety. 

In this story we follow four young people, each with their own motives and secrets. We have Alfred, the young German soldier, who believes in Hitler’s cause insofar as it doesn’t interrupt his plans for himself, Florian the Prussian who is enacting a scheme of revenge, Joana, a young Lithuanian woman who feels guilty for the people lost to the war and Emilia, a Polish girl who has gotten lost in the mire of war. 

The four of them meet up on the road to Gotenhafen and while they at first seem to have different plans, they end up constantly running into and helping each other. During their trials we get to know all of them and their secrets as they slowly confide in each other or in Alfred’s case, himself, in the form of letters he dreams up to a sweetheart back home. I really liked all of the relationships in this book. I think they were believable and well written and while they maybe developed quite quickly I don’t think that is unusual in a high-stress setting such as this. As for the characters individually I also felt like we got to know them well, both by hearing their thoughts as narrators, but also by their actions, both of which fit well with each other which is not always the case. 

I liked the writing style of this book. We have four different viewpoints as each of the four people tell their side of the story. That gives us the opportunity to learn a number of their private thoughts and fears, but I must admit that sometimes it did feel a little longwinded to have to see the same events from multiple angles. I also thought that the attempt to build suspense sometimes fell a bit flat. It was especially Florian’s “mission” that seemed a bit off to me. As a plot point it was interesting enough, but it seemed like it was too drawn out in order to fit the timeline of the narrative. Like we would start to learn something, then the point of view would change and when we got back to Florian, we would start again from the beginning. I guess it was necessary to keep the suspense going all the way through the book, but I think it could have been plotted out better.  

The fact that this book is based on historical events meant that you sort of knew the ending before it happened. Some people might find that boring, but in this case I thought it just made it all the more heartbreaking. They fought so hard to get on that ship and all the while you knew that maybe it would be better for them if they were denied passage. At the same time you still had hope, because there were a number of survivors of the sinking, but in books like these you just KNOW that not all of your favorite characters are going to make it. And the moment I lost one of them did make me teary-eyed. I did have a bit of a stressful time at the end waiting to see who would survive and who wouldn’t, and while I of course would have preferred all of them to make it, I was quite pleased with how it turned it. 

I gave this book 5 stars out of 5 on Goodreads.