“Romania, 1989.
Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; rules and force bind them. Amidst 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. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe creatively.
Cristian 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. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost of freedom?” — from https://rutasepetys.com/.
Ruta Sepetys, as usual, outdid herself with “I Must Betray You.” As someone who has always been interested in European history, especially communism, I was particularly interested to read this one as it focuses on Romania, and the end of the Iron Curtain era, rather than the beginning and middle of the Iron Curtain era. The perspectives she brought to communism through this book are truly fantastic.
As a reader, she helped me think about this era of history in a different light. It helped me realize the severity of what was going on in the countries affected by communism, and how clueless they truly were about the outside world. They didn’t know that the rest of the world lived nothing like them.
It moves very fast and I read it in about two days. There are a few parts where everything moves so fast that it’s hard to keep track, but by the end, all the dots connect. Overall, this book is well-written, and I would highly recommend it to people who are looking for books that focus on this topic.
