Starlight Book Review – Ruta Sepetys’ I Must Betray You

Cover of Book – I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys – centered on a dark red background with the “Starry Night Elf” Logo in the lower right hand corner | Cover Image Source: Goodreads

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.

Starlight Book Review – Elizabeth Wetmore’s Valentine

Cover of Book – Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore – centered on a rich terra cotta orange background with the “Starry Night Elf” Logo in the lower right hand corner | Cover Image Source: Goodreads

Set in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge – 1970s

Set in the Year 1976/ Published in 2020

Trigger Warning – rape/ abuse/ substance abuse/ and violence

3.78/5 The Book Girls’ Guide brought my attention to Elizabeth Wetmore’s Valentine during my search for books about the 1970s. Click here to check out their link for Books Set in the 1970s. Valentine became my entry for my own Set in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge (SRC) as it met my criteria for this reading goal.

Click here for more information on this SRC.

“An astonishing debut novel that explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s… Mercy is hard in a place like this . . .
It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow… In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field—an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences… Valentine is a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class and region in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into beauty and hope. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible characters who burrow deep in the reader’s heart, this fierce, unflinching, and surprisingly tender novel illuminates women’s strength and vulnerability, and reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive.”

A poignant beginning, Wetmore pulled me into Valentine with young Gloria Ramírez’s nightmarish plight. I found Mary Rose Whitehead’s first person accounts compelling, too. In addition, I felt Corinne and numerous other characters sparked my interest in Valentine. While I thought I kept the characters straight as I read this book, I wished to know more about Gloria who later changes her name to Glory and even Mary Rose. By the time Wetmore gets around to the second person chorus of women in Karla Shipley’s chapter, I wanted to shrink the scope of the book and focus on the first few characters. Also, Wetmore endeavored to share about the problems many females and Vietnam vet Jesse suffered in the 1970s. I appreciated this but preferred to zoom in for three or four characters’ lives than a dozen.

This book straddled a time and place adjacent to my own existence. The time predates me and I grew up in the Texas Gulf Coast region as opposed to the dry, rugged terrain of oil town Odessa. So, some of this seemed vaguely familiar but also quite different from my own experience coming of age in late Twentieth Century Texas. That pleases me as I aim to diversify my reading with every SRC I craft. Also, Wetmore endeavored to share about the problems many females and Vietnam vet Jesse suffered in the 1970s. Still, I read this around the same time as Justin Deabler’s Lone Stars and sometimes confused the overlap of certain parts of these two books. I don’t blame either Wetmore or Deabler for my bad timing, though.

Click here to read my review of Lone Stars.

Quotes come from book flaps/cover and are featured on color blocks.

Starlight Book Review – Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle

Cover of Book – Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead – centered on a medium green background with the “Starry Night Elf” Logo in the lower right hand corner | Cover Image Source: Goodreads

Set in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge – 1960s

Set in the Years 1959-1964/ Published in 2021

Trigger Warning – Death / Murder / Drugs / Sex / Language / Crime / Racism

3.8/5 I saw numerous rave reviews of Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle. When my book club announced Whitehead’s 2021 novel as its read in August, it thrilled me. Whitehead’s works long held places on my To Be Read (TBR) Shelf. So now I endeavored to remedy that as well as read this for the Set in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge (SRC). Click here for more information on this SRC.

“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…” To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home… Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time… Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either… Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the “Waldorf of Harlem”—and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes… Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?… Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem… But mostly, it’s a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.”

A gifted storyteller, Whitehead sets his scene and characters in clear focus. I felt I could easily see Ray, Elizabeth, and Freddie, among others in Harlem Shuffle with great precision. This book transports the reader to the slick underbelly of New York City. I enjoyed the audio with Richard Barenberg narrating. Did I care much for these characters? Well — not really. Yet, I understood why Ray might just be slightly bent. Yes, I think Whitehead’s other works might remain on my TBR Shelf as well.

Please check out this review from Joyful Reads With Joy [IG] by clicking here.

Quotes come from book flaps/cover and are featured on color blocks.

Starlight Book Review – Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon

Cover of The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett on a brown background | Image Source: Goodreads

Back in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge – 1930s

Published 1930

3.9/5 I cannot recall a time I hadn’t heard of Sam Spade or falcons from Malta. As an avid reader of mysteries, I knew of Dashiell Hammett’s private eye novel The Maltese Falcon. When I discovered The Maltese Falcon was published in 1930, I decided I wanted to read it for the Back in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge (SRC), the prospect of discovering books from the 1920s thrilled me.

“A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s iconic, influential, and beloved The Maltese Falcon.” 

I think The Maltese Falcon established the Detective Mystery Subgenre. I found much to admire in Hammett’s writing — well-drawn characters, an interesting storyline, a colorful setting. Since some of elements in The Maltese Falcon seemed cliché, I imagined that it was because Hammett created what many other writers in various media try to emulate to this day. Also, some of the expressions and treatments in 1930s California would hopefully not fly in the world of 2022. Setting aside 1930s conventions and attitudes, I recommend this book to any reader eager to discover the genesis of a subgenre.

Quotes come from book flaps/cover and are featured on color blocks.