In her author’s note, Ruta Sepetys explained that it was believed that one Romanian on ten was an informant. This was mind boggling, thinking that even in your own house you would be spied upon. Not at all! On the contrary as I think Ruta Sepetys succeeded in immersing me under that suffocating regime or terror, where you mistrust everyone, where you are not free to speak, even in your own bathroom as the regime had cameras and listening devices everywhere! This book didn’t move me the same way Ruta’s previous books did and I needed a longer time to fall into it.īut what this book did was open my eyes on events I had no awareness about! And that’s what I adore about Ruta Sepetys’s books: she revisits history and sheds light on events that were relatively unknown or forgotten in the grand scheme of life.Īnd I don’t use these words to say that the book is a bad book. But what is the cost of freedom? Audiobook Review He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves-or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.Ĭristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream they are bound by rules and force.Īmidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. A gut-wrenching, startling window into communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation, from the number one New York Times best-selling, award-winning author of Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray.

I must betray you chapter summary