Winterkill

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

From acclaimed author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, this incredibly gripping and timely story set during the Holodomor in 1930s Ukraine introduces young readers to a pivotal moment in history-- and how it relates to the events of today. Nyl is just trying to stay alive. Ever since the Soviet dictator, Stalin, started to take control of farms like the one Nyl's family lives on, there is less and less food to go around. On top of bad harvests and a harsh winter, conditions worsen until it's clear the lack of food is not just chance... but a murderous plan leading all the way to Stalin. Alice has recently arrived from Canada with her father, who is here to work for the Soviets... until Alice realizes that the people suffering the most are all ethnically Ukrainian, like Nyl. Something is very wrong, and Alice is determined to help. Desperate, Nyl and Alice come up with an audacious plan that could save both of them -- and their community. But can they survive long enough to succeed? Known as the Holodomor, or death by starvation, Ukraine's Famine-Genocide in the 1930s was deliberately caused by the Soviets to erase the Ukrainian people and culture. Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch brings this deeply resonant, and remarkably timely, historical world to life in a story about unity, perseverance, and a people's determination to overcome.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Middle Grade, Fiction, Historical, Ukraine, Young Adult, Canada

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2022

About the author

Marsha Skrypuch is an internationally bestselling children’s author whose books span a century of wars from a kid’s view, concentrating on those stories that have been erased by oppressive regimes. Her best-known book is Making Bombs for Hitler. Her most recent is the Kidnapped from Ukraine trilogy. She has received death threats and honors for her writing. Marsha lives in Brantford, Ontario, Canada and you can visit her online at calla.com

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

To call Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's 2022 young adult novel Winterkill heartbreaking and hugely textually traumatic is an understatement. And even though I read Winterkill in August 2025, it has actually taken me until the end of October 2025 to finally write and post a review, simply because Winterkill has been such a painful and upsettingly poignant reading personal reading experience. For yes, what Forchuk Skrypuch textually provides in and throughout Winterkill, this is all simply and utterly excellent but is also totally and absolutely horrifying, necessarily so, I might add, but Winterkill is most definitely all encompassingly distressing, presenting a brutally historically and culturally authentic and as such of course and equally so true and honest depiction of the Holodomor.

But furthermore and very much importantly and appreciatively, Winterkill thankfully and equally does not ever try to assuage and lessen Soviet government and in particular Joseph Stalin's guilt, that there are no attempts in Winterkill by Marhsa Forchuk Skrypuch of trying to even remotely portray the Holodomor as a famine caused by weather patterns, crop failures, bad luck, bad planning and the like but as a totally deliberate and calculated massive genocide against Ukraine and against the Ukrainian people orchestrated and specifically planned by Stalin and by the Soviet government (and this especially brutally and with both hatred and horridly efficient calculation against Ukrainian farmers, with Stalin and his goose-stepping minions and soldiers stealing their crops, the food in their pantries, the vegetables in their gardens, their cattle, their dogs and cats, their lives by the millions).

However and just to point out, I also find it majorly cheering as well as uplifting, that while in Winterkill, Soviet government functionaries, Soviet politicians, Soviet soldiers are always to at least for the most part shown and featured as major and as totally monstrous villains (and in my opinion hugely justifiably so), Forchuk Skrypuch also in Winterkill does not try to show all Russians as being nasty and is therefore not depicting all Russians as horrid monstrosities who are categorically against Ukraine and despise Ukrainian farmers (so that in Winterkill, once main protagonists Nyl and Alice have on their flight from the Holodomor and to let the world know of Stalin's deliberate starvation genocide managed to clandestinely cross into Russia, Russian farmers shelter them and also show that they are totally against Joseph Stalin and that the famine in the Ukraine is seen by many Russians as a genocide, as Stalin deliberately killing millions of innocents).

Now I do appreciate that except for many (even if not all) of the Soviet soldiers and of course the Soviet functionaries and politicians, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch does generally (in my opinion) try to make most of the characters inhabiting the pages of Winterkill nicely three-dimensional, from people who just are hoping to get by (to survive) to those who turn on their neighbours as informers and for personal gain (with in Winterkill there being many points of view amongst friends and neighbours and that we see them clearly rather than as statistics delineating those who deny, who hide seeds and provisions, those who try to escape, those who die without lifting a finger). And yes, Alice and her father in Winterkill (as naively idealistic Ukrainian Canadian Communists who have travelled to the Soviet Union to help usher in Stalin's "utopian" collectivism) at first (and like was actually often the case with many especially North American Socialists and Communists and in particular with many left wing American journalists) being totally pro Stalin, pro collectivisation but then changing their minds when it becomes clear to them that Joseph Stalin is deliberately starving Ukrainians, indeed, I have found this a very good addition and I really like how Forchuk Skrypuch with Winterkill also portrays the role of the foreign, primarily North American specialists and journalists in the spread of Soviet propaganda.

Winterkill is the account of two young adults (of the above mentioned Nyl and Alice) who are textually shown by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch as managing to survive three long and painfully horror-filled years during the Holodomor, a story of survival, but also one detailing how the destruction of humanity often happens during a state and a time of both physical and mental siege, with Nyl and Alice's extraordinary resilience and their ability to adapt in the face of incredible challenges and all-encompassing famine and Soviet terror tactics being perhaps a bit hard to believe but that my inner teenaged reader has really appreciated that with all of the death and destruction present in and throughout Winterkill Nyl and Alice do not end up dying. And yes and finally, Winterkill is also a story of disillusionment, how Alice and her father believed so fervently in the hope that an egalitarian society would bring a better life for all (and to have all of this completely destroyed by Joseph Stalin and his forced and cruel collectivisations and of course by the Holodmor itself).

Five stars for Winterkill but with the caveat that Winterkill is heavy duty and painful (see above), and yes, major and massive kudos to Forchuk Skyrpuch for so clearly demonstrating both the evils of Stalinism and without any doubt showing that the Holodomor was a deliberately created terror famine, was a gneocide, with Joseph Stalin the main villain (and very much also the exact mirror image of Adolf Hitler and of course vice versa).

[Librariann · Rating 4 out of 5]

** I received a free Advance Reader's copy from the publisher because I am a librarian, and librarians are awesome **

"But why would he do that?" asked Alice.

"He wants Ukranian land, but not Ukranian culture and traditions. He wants the Soviet Union to be Russian."

I was browsing through the ARCs on Edelweiss when this one struck me as something that I should read, given the current situation between Russia and the Ukraine. Once I started, I couldn't put it down.

My family has Ukranian heritage, and I was baptized in the Ukranian Orthodox church. My mother makes pysanky and paska at Easter, and my cousins participated in Ukranian dance troupes when they were young. But I had never heard of the Holodomor.

While this was written in the heavy tell-don't-show style common with Scholastic middle-grade paperbacks and didn't have the artistry of Ruta Sepetys, I couldn't help but be reminded of I Must Betray You or Shades of Grey, both of which also shed light on historical atrocities in the Soviet era.

People DIE in this book. Constantly. Gracelessly. Violently. Peacefully. Dramatically and quietly. This is a book that shows the cruelty of the Holodomor famine and the suffering it inflicted on its people. It may not be a literary book, but, oh, is it a gut-wrenching one. As someone who read Holocaust fiction as a youth, I'm not sure if I would have devoured this at 11 or if it would have destroyed me. But I know there will be plenty of current historical fiction fans who would very much appreciate this story.

Hand it to your pre-teens who like Jennifer Nielsen, Alan Gratz, or Holocaust works.

[Mateusz · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Winterkill" is a beautifully written and meticulously researched novel about the Holodomor, Stalin's man-made famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine. Skrypuch brilliantly illuminates the entanglements of the East and the West (one of the protagonists is Canadian) and proves why learning more about Ukrainian history is so vital if we want to understand European history. Reading "Winterkill" in the present-day socio-political situation is heartbreaking, though, due to the similarities between Putin and Stalin.

Notably, Skrypuch portrays the role of the foreign, primarily North American, specialists and journalists in the spread of Soviet propaganda. "Winterkill" is more graphic than her WWII novels, yet it is not "too" graphic. Considering the apparent limitations of middle school fiction, I am impressed by how realistic and multilayered the novel is (without sugar-coating or exaggerating the facts).

It is a must-read, especially now.

[BooksNCrannies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Winterkill is historically educational but lacks in many key literary elements.

✏️ Review ✏️

*stares begrudgingly at Winterkill* 😒 That was quite the depressing read. So much death. So much brutality. So much suffering. Winterkill is very reminiscent of Ruta Sepetys's Between Shades of Gray; except Winterkill has more MG characteristics and lacks the artistic flare of Sepetys's book. Before I talk about anything else (good or bad), let me just say that this is a very educational book on the horrors of Stalin's genocide of the Ukrainian people — known as the Holodomor. (Not recommended for the targeted audience group of 8-12 year olds, tho. More on that in my Random Comments.) Moving on....

The plot was ok. It's average — nothing extraordinary, nothing suspenseful. The plot did feel somewhat unevenly paced at times, so at points it feels a bit boring. I definitely wasn't hooked on this story like I have been with other books about this time period (Ruta Sepetys, Jennifer A. Nielsen, etc.). But it still does a good job at portraying the grim and desperate situations people faced during this time in history.

Now let me talk about what grated on me like fingernails on a chalkboard (oh, sorry if you're sensitive to that! — my very poor attempt at getting some humor into this review 😉). The characters are flat, emotionless, and come across as contrived. Like, seriously! They feel like empty lifeless vessels. I tried. 🤷🏼‍♂️ I tried really hard to get to know them. Descriptions of the characters' emotions are very rare at best; ok, yeah, there are some mentions of something like "his heart ached," "he felt betrayed," or "he was disgusted." But other than that, internal character emotions are missing, making the characters feel superficial. So I couldn't feel a connection with the characters' plight and suffering, which defeats the purpose of this book's goal.

And there are several instances where these characters do things that just make them even worse, and quite frankly ridiculous. As an example, there's this scene where the MC comes across his dad lying in the barn. The MC starts talking to him and finds out that their grain has been stolen and that his father's been brutally beaten and injured. What's the MC's response? "Oh no.... We have nothing to plant then?" Like, hellllooooooo??!! *waves hands dramatically* 🙋🏼‍♂️ You just find out your father's been severally beaten — he can't even stand up — and all you do is ask about some stupid wheat?! 🤨 Then right after that they're having a regular conversation about tractors and grain just like everything's fine and dandy. Oh, and by the way your dad's still lying on the floor with an injured back. 🤦🏼‍♂️ Finally... finally it's not until several paragraphs of conversation later that the MC asks his dad — woops, actually I just looked back at the convo, and Nyl, the MC, never does ask his dad if he's ok.... *shakes head disapprovingly* Very disappointing lack of positive character qualities. 😔 And it doesn't help that this story's first person POV isn't very engaging either.

Further compounding my dislike of Winterkill is the writing style. It's clunky, unengaging, and all too often disjointed (more nails scraping ever so slowly on the chalkboard 😏). Certainly wasn't a fan of it at all.

Well, there's my thoughts and observations. In a way I am trying to discourage you from reading this book in order to spare you from the pain of struggling through the story; but I also don't want to scare you completely away from it either, as I see there are many five-star reviews for this book (perhaps it's overrated! 😄). Winterkill is educational and does have historical merit (and it does give chilly winter vibes 🥶), but there are better books about this time period out there. If you do read it, just be prepared for a morbid story....

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📊 A Quick Overview 📊

👍🏼 What I Liked:
• The educational history about the Holodomor.

👎🏼 What I Did Not Like:
• The characters — they're flat, emotionless, and feel contrived.
• The writing style — it's clunky, unengaging, and disjointed.
• Some parts of the plot — too boring.

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📖 BOOK BREAKDOWN 📖 (Overall: 2/5)
~Fundamentals: (1=worst; 5=best)
— 📈 Plot: 2.5/5
— 📝 Writing: 2/5
— 👥 Characters: 1.5/5

~Content: (0=none; 1=least; 5=most)

— 🤬 Language: 0/5

— ⚔️ Violence: 2/5

• Some mildy graphic descriptions of brutality including shootings and abuse.

• A few potentially disturbing descriptive scenes involving death (mentions blood).

— ⚠️ Sexual: 0/5

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📣 Random Comments 📣

• Besides a few other potentially overly descriptive details elsewhere in the book, there is one particular scene of brutality and death that I felt to be too descriptive for Winterkill's marketed MG audience (8-12 year olds). Therefore, I would not recommend this book to MG readers; teens should be fine with reading this, however.

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💬 Favorite Quotes 💬

• (None)

[Marsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nyl is just trying to stay alive. Ever since the Soviet dictator, Stalin, started to take control of farms like the one Nyl’s family lives on, there is less and less food to go around. On top of bad harvests and a harsh winter, conditions worsen until it’s clear the lack of food is not just chance… but a murderous plan leading all the way to Stalin.

Alice has recently arrived from Canada with her father, who is here to work for the Soviets… until they realize that the people suffering the most are all ethnically Ukrainian, like Nyl. Something is very wrong, and Alice is determined to help.

Desperate, Nyl and Alice come up with an audacious plan that could save both of them—and their community. But can they survive long enough to succeed?

Known as the Holodomor, or death by starvation, Ukraine’s Famine-Genocide in the 1930s was deliberately caused by the Soviets to erase the Ukrainian people and culture. Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch brings this lesser-known, but deeply resonant, historical world to life in a story about unity, perseverance, and the irrepressible hunger to survive.

[Ms. Yingling · Rating 4 out of 5]

E ARC Provided by Edelweiss Plus

Nyl's family runs a farm in 1930s Ukraine near the village of Felivka, and life is becoming more and more difficult now that Stalin has come to power. When the government sends around Canadian George White and his daughter Alice to take an inventory of their farm, the family, which includes Nyl's younger siblings Slavko and Yulia, knows this will not end well. The government is trying to force all farmers to join a collective, the kolkhoz, and are taking livestock, equipment, and other property to start this farm. Those who don't cooperate are deemed "kulaks" and face harsh treatment. Unfortunately, this treatment comes close to home when Nyl's uncle argues with Comrade Chort, who shoots him dead, leaving behind his wife and baby daughter. The aunt is removed from the house, and all of her property is taken by Chort, who moves his family in. Nyl is lucky that he is able to gets some of his family's animals out of the uncle's barn. The farmers who have joined the kolkhoz work long hours, but are hopeful that the government will pay them well, but that does not happen. Eventually, Nyl's family has all of their seed and equipment taken away, but are still expected to meet a quota for growing grain. Even the family's food is taken away, forcing Nyl and Slavko to travel to the new tractor factory to work there. Even Slavko, at nine, works all day making bricks. When the boys find out that the tractor factory is not going to be providing tractors for the upcoming season, they know how devastating this will be, and return home. Their father has been beaten, and can barely walk, and knows it is time to try to leave Ukraine. In the end, only Nyl's aunt and cousin are sent to try to make it to Poland. Conditions worsen, food is scarce, and the father dies after Yulia decides that she is going to join the kolkhoz, having informed on her family. Food becomes so scarce that Nyl and his mother try to dig up grain from the kolkhoz field, but they are discovered and the mother is shot and killed. Nyl has an address for Roman, who father and mother were killed earlier, and decides to set out for the city to find him. Nyl meets Alice again and hopes that she and her father, who has become disillusioned with Stalin, can get him out of the country. He manages to get forged identification papers, and they plan a sight seeing trip as cover, but when her father is arrested and Slavkov decides he wants to stay at the tractor factory, she and Nyl try to escape on their own. The two meet up with Roman, who has taken to stealing in order to survive, and gain enough strength to move on. They make their way into Russian, and end up at the farm of Anna, who is elderly and needs help. She is kind, and takes good care of them, but Alice manages to find a way to get back to Canada. Nyl is determined to keep going, even though he suffered so many losses.
Strengths: I am old enough that in the back of my mind, the Russians always seem evil. My best friend's mother's family had a farm in Latvia that was taken away from them, so Nyl's story seemed very familiar to me. However, younger readers won't know a lot of this history. Like all of Skrypuch's work, this is well researched, and has some connections to people who lived through similar circumstances. The horrific events are told honestly, but never in a sensational way; just with heartbreaking humanity. It's easy to sit in our comfortable homes and think "Well, why would they chance getting shot to get grain from the fields?", but the reality was that there was really no other choice. There is a lot of historical information, but it is shown on a framework of a fast moving plot, held up by sympathetic characters. Alice is certainly an intriguing character who learns what the consequences of her actions are, and I would almost like to see a separate book about Yulia and her experiences trying to be an exemplary member of the Young Pioneers. Middle school and high school libraries all need this timely book, although elementary libraries should know that many people die during the story.
Weaknesses: The end notes with more history of Ukraine are very helpful, but I almost wanted a couple of more maps in the book so I could tell where Nyl was traveling and compare his location with current news of Ukraine.
What I really think: I had never heard of the Holodomor, the famine/genocide carried out against the Ukrainians by the Russians, and it took a long time before the facts about this were known and recognized by the world at large. Mypublic library, which has an extensive collection, only has two books on the subject. I wish that Ukraine had some happier history; the Ukrainian people have suffered enough. Read Spradlin's The Enemy Above, Nielsen's Lines of Courage, Kerr's Winter Horses, Blankman's Blackbird Girls, or Skrypuch's other books to find out more about what this country and its people have suffered. It is not a surprise that they are fighting so strenuously against the Russians. Winterkill is another well researched and important book by Skrypuch, but one that is utterly heartbreaking.

[Jennifer Mangler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm ashamed to admit I didn't know about the Holodomor until Russia invaded Ukraine last year. Knowing about that history definitely impacted how I view Russia's actions today, but reading this book took it to a whole new level. Wow. This book packs a punch. Skrypuch does a masterful job of bringing the many horrors of this time in Ukraine's history to life.

[Maureen Grigsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very good YA novel about the deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930’s by Stalin. This book was recommended by Ari Velshi’s in his Banned Book Club. Well done!

[C.A. Simonsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A serious historical event treated seriously.

Marsha Skrypuch does an excellent job of researching and relaying the death by starvation, or Holodomor, of the 1930s. The novel is told in a young adult fashion, without too many gory details, but with earnestness and sincerity, as a boy called Nyl gradually loses everything he once had to Stalin's brutal and corrupt rule.

"Death had become too common to react to, and that was horrifying in itself." When you are starving, you do not have time to mourn the loss of a loved one or the loss of your farm. Winterkill is a stark reminder of what the people of the USSR and its satellite nations went through: the worst conditions being in Ukraine. It's a reminder of the importance of decent government.

This title would be a great addition to grade nine through twelve classrooms.

[Kathie]

Thank you to the publisher for an ARC of the September 6th release WINTERKILL.

One of the things I most enjoy about this author's writing is learning about history with which I wasn't familiar. I hadn't heard of The Holodomar, which was Stalin's attempt to starve the people of Ukraine in the 1930s and resulted in millions of deaths. Through this upper middle-grade historical fiction novel, I learned about an example of the horrific mistreatment of Ukraine by Russia that unfortunately resurfaces again today and gives us some backstory to the relationship between these two countries.

Nyl and his family live in the Ukrainian town of Felivka and are unwilling to join the Soviet-initiated movement to collectivize farming and join the local kolkhoz. Alice and her father are from Canada and aiding with the Russian effort by taking inventory of goods and resources of the townspeople. When extremists start to plunder and murder innocent people, Nyl and his family become victims of their brutalization and realize they must leave their home if they hope to survive. They travel to a nearby community to work at the tractor factory and save enough money to procure travel documents. But fate takes a nasty turn, and the brothers return home to find their family in dire straits. Nyl and Alice eventually join forces to try and escape the famine and share the realities of Stalin's plan with the rest of the world.

This is not an easy story to read, but in the author's characteristic style, she brings history to light in a powerful way for young readers. Her frank and honest depictions of life during times of extreme injustice not only give readers a look into past atrocities but also show the resilience, perseverance, and hope that fueled those who struggled to survive. I think this would be an excellent novel to discuss in the classroom and how it ties to current events (what are some of the historical issues that continue to replay themselves, and what needs to happen for significant change to occur?) and I look forward to hearing what young readers have to say about this book.

[Gabriele Goldstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marsha's plot-driven, middle-grade historical novels explore tough topics. This one—about the Holodomor (intentional famine directed by Stalin in 1931/2 Ukraine)—is uncomfortably current even though it's set 90 years ago. My own kulak grandfather somehow survived the famine, but millions were not so lucky.

Told from 12 year-old Nyl's point of view, the novel has a fascinating Canadian connection through Alice, her father, and Canadian-built tractors. The story of Ukraine's suffering is part of my own family's story and I appreciate Marsha's well-researched efforts to keep it alive.

[Melanie Dulaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch has gifted readers of middle grade historical fiction with the Making Bombs for Hitler trilogy, the trio of books beginning with Don’t Tell the Nazis and many other works that have kept my students reading and taught them much about lesser known events in Ukraine. Now she tackles a time of famine and genocide called the Holodomor, which, when translated, means “death by hunger.” Main character Nyl lives with his farming family in Ukraine who are resisting offers by Soviet supporters of Stalin to add their farm to one big collective as part of a grand Communist plan to make lives better for all. But this five year plan had an evil side plot—steal every bit of food, trap all Ukrainians within their borders and starve out the people and the culture in an attempt to make the land completely Soviet. Nyl does all that he can to save his family but finds himself on the run with an unlikely friend, both doing all that they can to reveal the horror that is happening to someone in power. Skrypuch does not shy away from the brutal death that comes from slow starvation and the erasure of all hope, yet Winterkill remains a book that is absolutely appropriate for readers in grades 5 and up and with the invasion of Ukraine by Putin in 2022, needs to be read. No profanity or sexual content.

Electronic ARC provided by Edelweiss Above the Treeline.

[Thibaud Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is great historical fiction on Stalinism. I picked up this book to read after reading Raya Dunayevskaya's Russia: From Proletarian Revolution to State-Capitalist Counter-Revolution. The story tells how Stalin attempted to wipe Ukraine out through starvation. There is a parallel of what is happening in Gaza, Palestine and what happened in the late 1920's and 30's in Ukraine. Another book that is on my list to read is Ivan Dziuba's Internationalism or Russification.

[Jordan Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 out of 5 Stars to this window, mirror and sliding door middle grade novel by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch.

A timely, eye opening, hard to put down read told in first person about the Holodomor or “Murder by Hunger” genocide of the Ukrainian people by Russian dictator Stalin.

Meticulously researched and based on real people, Winterkill is told through the eyes of Nyl, a young Ukrainian boy whose family farms in a small village near Kharkiv. Skrypuch teaches about the Holodomor in a way that makes you feel as if you are there living through it. We are immersed in the day to life of Ukrainians in the early 1930’s as Stalin begins to integrate his five year plan that involves stealing all the food from Ukrainians, and sealing the borders to forbid them from leaving the country.

Importantly, we also see the perspective of some ordinary Russian citizens at this time, who show compassion and empathy for what is happening in Ukraine despite Stalin’s propaganda.

The connections that can be made to Putin’s war in Ukraine today are endless and this book will most certainly make for a compelling read aloud or novel study in middle grade classrooms. Students learn best when they are engaged, invested in and can see the impact in life today and this timely novel hits all three. I can’t wait to dig into the suggested resources on holodomor.ca and through Scholastic as I share this novel with my students.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hard but incredibly important book to read about the Soviet Union’s genocide against Ukraine, called Holodomor. Written for young readers, it doesn’t shy away from the horrors but places the reader in a position to understand what survival would have been like for children during this time period. Definitely worth reading! 4.5 stars

YA historical fiction

2022
Library paperback
Briar club vine flowing from The Lost Year
Manitoba young readers choice awards 2024

[Serena Caffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was very good. I loved how it was about someone who took his knowledge in natural healing taught to him by his dad to help others! It was a great book the whole way through! And it is now one of my favorites!

[Katelyn Opitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very quick but informative book. I learned about a portion of history that has been smothered and denied. Given all that’s going on in this area of the world today, this was especially challenging to read but am glad to have done so.

[Irelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoy historical fiction. And this one made me feel like i was actually experiencing it myself.

[Brandyg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written well. Historical read. I read it for book club and I think it will be a good conversation book

[Brittany Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful tale about what happened in the Ukrainian when Stalin came to power. The book is full of hope, strength, courage, death, friendships.

[Laura Gardner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pacing feels a bit off at times, but I love how Skrypuch educated me about Ukrainian history. I never knew about the Holodomor, or death by starvation that happened in 1930s Ukraine. My students are going to love this book.

[Mandy Day · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read with my son. Had good conversations about Stalin and what the Ukraine's went through back then and now. Allowed him to realize how quickly things can change through someone else's evil and power.

[Ranee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! What a powerful story! I can vividly see what this family and people had to go through. And to think that Ukraine is still being threatened.

[Gary R Hays · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is happening again.

I am a 76 year old man, and think this is well written.
I enjoyed character development and how the story line moved along.
I would highly recommend this for any teenager.

[Kristen Strocchia · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely heartwrenching piece of history that I knew little to nothing about! Nyl and Alice's story will be staying with me for a long time to come.

[Ellie Gaidai · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was rly good and i definitely learned a lot. But i have to say the end was very unsatisfying and i think the author could’ve made it better. But overall i learned a ton of stuff from this book. It was also very touching.

[Joe Holman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is chilling. The historical elements in it are so incredibly powerful. And shows how history repeats itself. The Russian dictator Stalin starved millions of Ukrainians to death so he could have Russians replace them in the fertile farms of eastern Ukraine. Now, because there are so many Russian descendants in eastern Ukraine, the dictator Putin wants to annex eastern Ukraine and make it part of Russia. And, like Stalin, Putin doesn't care how many Ukrainians (or Russians) he kills.

The book is incredibly timely.

[Jackie Stubbers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a topic I haven't heard much about, so this book was very enlightening. My ten year old niece is the one who gave me the book, so it's a good read for older kids as well as adults.

[Elijah McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book.

[Laura Nungester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book started slow I fell in love with the characters and the story. This is a time in history that many do not know about, as it tends to be a story more of a political struggle rather than the horrors of the Ukranian people by the hands of Stalin. This story is intricately told through the eyes of the characters who lived it. Well told and very real to teh history that took place. What a time to read this story as we watch the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continue to escalate.