Please look up trigger warnings for this book before you read!!!

Salt to the Sea is a gripping historical fiction novel about the tragedy of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German evacuation ship that sank, killing nearly 75,000 people. Set in the winter of 1945, towards the end of WW2, 4 strangers from all over Europe rush to board the Wilhelm Gustloff to escape from Stalin's forces as they invaded the continent. Joanna runs from her home country of Lithuania, bringing along survivors' guilt from an accidental betrayal. Florian escapes East Prussia, carrying a deadly artifact that both the Soviets and the Germans would kill for. Emilia is on the search for the remnants of her family and safety from the cold war that seems to follow her wherever she goes. And Alfred is a young German soldier desperate to prove himself during the evacuation. All 4 of the young escapees hide their own dangerous secrets, and the Wilhelm Gustloff is their only hope of survival. But as their paths cross, it becomes clear that even the most indestructible ship in Europe can be touched by war. 

Salt to the Sea stood out to me as a slightly different WW2 book than most others I‘ve read. It was the first YA novel I‘ve read about the subject and focused on historical topics I‘ve never heard about before. I only picked this book up because it was for my school’s Battle of The Books, but this tale drew me in and the story really stuck with me. Although the book is mainly story and character-driven, you learn a lot about the historical context of the setting. The Wilhelm Gustloff was a fascinating yet little-known event in history, even though its death count was far greater than the Titanic’s. Normally when I read a book with switching perspectives, I  only like the POV’s of certain characters and get bored when it comes to others. However in this book, each chapter intrigued me, and every character had an interesting perspective and narrative. This was in part due to the parallels between each character’s stories. They have similar themes in each of their characters, and they all suffered similar traumas. What makes their stories interesting is how they dealt with these traumas and what motivated each of them to keep going. There wasn’t a single boring chapter in this book; in fact, each one made me feel something different. I felt so many different feelings throughout this story, from fear, to comfort, to anger, to happiness, to sadness, to shock, and fierce anger one again. And by the end of the tale, I  was filled with sadness and grief, but also satisfaction. The ending of the book was in no way the perfect ending; but it was realistic, and understandable, which felt comforting after all the awful things that had happened over the book. The thing that stood out to me about this book is that it focused on the forgotten voices of war. Instead of focusing on more widely known events and facts about WW2, we learned about entire populations forced to move, innocents mistreated and mangled, tragedies that were never acknowledged, and unspeakable horrors. The story pushes the narrative that sometimes the people that suffer the most in war are the ones who can never share their story, just one among the millions whose tale will never be shared with the world. Salt to the Sea has really stuck with me over the years, and its characters and their pain haunt me on a daily basis. It was truly a riveting book, and I‘d recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about history. Or anyone who wants extreme emotional damage. Seriously, this book was sad.