Salt to the sea by Ruta Sepetys

Okay, I had this fear of ships already, before reading this book, but now I hate them even more. I don't think I will ever be able to go to a cruise ever again in my life. Everyone knows about the Titanic in my opinion, but the story of the Wilhelm Gustloff is just a hundred- times more heart wrenching.
Salt to the sea by Ruta Sepetys made me cry a lot and making me cry over a book is not easy. I expected this book to be more about the shipwreck, but in reality it is really about the people in this book running for their lives into safety, because no one really protects them in the war anymore. It takes place at the end of WWII. Germany is falling, but no one really admits it and the Russians are coming. In the center of the story there are four people, one thinks he is hero and is helping Germany, his name is Alfred. Joana is a nurse from Latvia, but she was allowed to go to Germany, because she had Germans in her family. She is wandering with a small group of people. Emilia, the Polish girl doesn't really know where she is going. Florian is running as well and tries to stay alive. He saves Emilia from a russian soldier and from that point Emilia follows him. And soon they meet the group in which Joana is and it turns out Emilia is eight months pregnant. The group pretty much goes together through the book from that point. Alfred is the one, who is in the harbor and he is preparing the ships for the people.
At firls I was afraid that, it will be disturbing to have the story told from four perspectives, but it tied together very well. The characters in this book were strong and captivating and they all had their own stories. The mutual thing to tie them together was the war and how much they have lost, because of it. They became a family on the road and they were holding on to each other. It's really interesting, that these people wouldn't have met if there wasn't a war. This is the example of, how something good can come out of something so wrong and tragic. Besides the four main characters there were so many other interesting people in this book, the Shoe Poet, who always talks about shoes, a little boy who joins the group one day from the woods, because his grandma didn't woke up.
The part when the ship sank was for me scarier than it was the Titanic movie. And that was on a screen and we saw the water and the ship sinking. But here it is told from peoples perspectives and it is also described, but you see the picture through emotions of people . And that made it so much different and so much more realistic in my opinion.
Lately I have read a lot of YA historical fiction and compared to this one, they were a little bit holding back on the shocking side of the war. This book just made me cry and feel thousands of emotions and it never let me down, because even if I only had time to read one or two pages, something always happened on those two pages.
If you haven't read this book, what are you waiting for?! And if you have read this book, what did you think of it? Please tell me in the comment below.
Until next time,
Bianka