Set in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge – 1980s
Set in the Year 1989/ Published in 2022
Trigger Warning – death of a family member/ implied sexual harassment/ gun violence/ bloodshed and physical violence
4.4/5 Once again, I sought the sage reader’s advisory of the Book Girls’ Guide for my “Set in the Day” book for the 1980s. Click here to check out their link for Books Set in the 1980s. Ultimately, I selected a book by one of my favorite historical fiction writers, Ruta Sepetys, set in the days of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship in Romania. In fact, I recall seeing reports about Romania as a child and selected I Must Betray You as my 1980s read.
Click here for more information on this SRC.
“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; 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.“
I read* I Must Betray You a few months ago and this book remains fresh and recent in my memory. I doubt this book would’ve been fresher in my mind if I had finished it yesterday. I Must Betray You sets a bleak stage for main narrator Cristian Florescu in dark and dim Bucharest of 1989. Blackmailed by the secret police, Cristian begins spying on Dan, the son of a U.S. Diplomat. As a character, Dan served well as a gage of what an American teen boy in the 1980s might be like in a country such as Romania. Also, Irina Drucan’s daughter helped show the differences between to two nations. I felt Sepetys showed readers yet again why her works belong on the shelf of any avid historical fiction reader. I deducted a partial star because the romance seemed a little much for everything else taking place in the novel. Still, that might be just a matter of taste or preference.
* For the most part, I read the audio version of I Must Betray You and referred to the print copy so I knew both the text and sound of some of the Romanian names. I highly recommend checking out both, particularly the audio narrated by Edoardo Ballerini.
Quotes come from book flaps/cover and are featured on color blocks.
Starry Night Elf 