e-Audio, 07:10:32
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini & Ruta Sepetys
Release Date: February 1, 2022
Published by: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Read from: February 12-22, 2022
Stand-alone
Source: Library’s Libby
TW: Death, Violence, War, Mention of Gun Violence and being a Shooting Victim
For Readers Interested In: Historical Fiction, YA, Sparkly CoversRomania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force.
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 creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.
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?
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.
*MY THOUGHTS*
Not gonna lie, as a historical fiction novel, I only added this to my TBR for 2 reasons. I am doing the Popsugar Challenge and one of the prompts is to read something set in the 1980’s. The second reason is because I was born in 1988 and this book is set in 1989 and it’s already considered historical fiction, and LAWD is that really what we’re doing now? WTF. But I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
The Communists are failing all across Europe in 1989. There is a Romanian boy, Cristian who is living without any hopes of achiving his dreams. Instead he’s blackmailed into becoming an informer to tell on those around him. But can he do it?
I went into this blind about the subject. I hadn’t heard of the events that were happening in Romania in 89, so several times while reading it I went and Googled it to try to learn even more about it. Sepetys does a wonderful job with setting the feel for this book also, so I was melancholy and scared the whole time I was listening. I kept thinking he would be caught at every turn.
Unfortunately, with a premise like this, there’s only so much you can do. The entire thing was repetitive. He kept ensuring it would end well. He narcced on something. And then he realized someone else had also narcced on something. And then he realized that they they were all narccing on each other. It was really just a big book of mess.
Unfortunately I read this right as the mess with Ukraine and R_ssia started. I was watching the news and I remember thinking, I went from one global crisis to another. I finished before I started spiraling, but please be kind to yourself while reading this one right now.
The narration was good. I did not know before looking it up for this review that Sepetys herself was one of the narrators. That just made the experience even better. Idk, its just something about when the authors narrate their own stuff. They know when they want to the emphasis and they know when they want the pauses and stuff, so they always do it better than anyone else can. It’s always great.
The mystery was great tho. I was able to guess who it was, but when I tell you I didn’t get close to the extent that it was carried out. It really just goes to show you, in a time like this, don’t trust anyone. He let his guard down, but then when things in Romania started ramping up, he could definitely tell things weren’t as they thought.
This wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. I don’t want to say too much about it because I know this is a me thing and not a it thing, because I didn’t exactly read this for pleasure. I know that Sepetys has A LOT of fans and I didn’t want them coming for me lol Having the mystery aspect helped alot, but it still wasn’t enough for me to rate this as high as Between Shades of Grey or The Fountains of Silence. But if you like his fic, you will love this one. Don’t let me and my review bring you down!
Overall, I gave this
