Title: I Must Betray You
Author: Ruta Sepetys
Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: February 1, 2022
Length: 321 pages
Genre: Young adult / historical fiction
Source: Library
Rating:
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 picked up I Must Betray You with some trepidation. Reading a YA historical novel set during the last days of the Ceaușescu regime would not typically have been a go-to choice for me, but because this is my book group’s pick for the month, I decided to commit and give it a try. I’m glad I did.
I Must Betray You is a stark, brutal story of repression, cruelty and suffering, as experienced by 17-year-old Cristian. Cristian is a smart, kind teen living in Bucharest, worn down by the daily suffering and deprivation of life under the Ceaușescus. There’s little food, unreliable water and electricity, and constant fear. Anyone and everyone could be an informer. There are no secrets; there is no safety.
As told through Cristian’s experiences, it’s a terrifying life, and even the small moments of friendship, family connection, and potential romance are weighted down by fear: Can he trust the person he’s speaking with? Who else is listening? Can he believe what he hears?
Cristian’s life falls apart when he’s forced into an informer role. If he complies, his ailing grandfather will be given medicine. If not? Well, as bad as things are for his family, they can get much worse.
Without giving too much away, I Must Betray You follows Cristian through the darkest of days and up through the revolution that overthrew the Ceaușescu regime in 1989. Cristian’s experiences are harsh, scary, and awful to read about, and given the ambiguousness of the book’s opening, it’s very much an open question throughout whether he’ll survive.
I appreciate the storytelling and sensitivity that the author brings to this harsh narrative. The chapters are very short and sharp, and as each ended, I wanted to know more. This is a hard book to put down once started.
For me, the collapse of communist regimes in the late 1980s is something that doesn’t feel like long-ago history, but even so, I really didn’t know much specifically about Romania and what the Romanian people suffered through on a daily basis. I Must Betray You is eye-opening. I can only wonder how this book is received by its target audience of contemporary teens — are they aware of this period of history, and do they connect with the characters and events?
I Must Betray You is powerful and clearly very well researched. Somehow, I can’t quite bring myself to give it 5-stars — possibly because it feels like there’s so much exposition throughout, occasionally at the expense of the characters’ development. Pieces of the outcome (again, trying to avoid giving away details) feel unlikely too me, perhaps a tad too optimistic about survival given the realities of what happened in Romania at the time.
Overall, I Must Betray is a compelling, intense read, and I’m glad I had the experience. I’ve only read one book by this author previously (Out of the Easy, which I didn’t completely love). I think I’d like to read more, although my impression is that her work tends to be about very dark subjects, so I’ll likely hold off for a bit.
If you have any interest in an in-depth look at this traumatic, terrible chapter of history, I recommend I Must Betray You.
If you’ve read other books by Ruta Sepetys, please let me know your recommendations!
Bookshelf Fantasies 
I read this last year for the Cybils, and I completely agree about it being hard to put down. Short chapters and tons of tension—it was a one-sitting read for me.
Very hard to put down! I’m glad I read it — I don’t think I would have without my book group to motivate me.
I’m a Sepetys completist and love I Must Betray You! It might be my fav. Salt To the Sea and Between Shades of Gray are each good but have some difficult WW2 content. You might enjoy The Fountains of Silence next!
I think I actually have Salt to the Sea on my Kindle already, so that may end up my next book. My book group friends were all recommending Fountains of Silence too!
Enjoy! I think Out of Easy was her first book. She’s grown as a writer. So dependable!
I know lots of people love this author, but I don’t really gravitate towards war/oppression type stories. This sounds harrowing!
I don’t gravitate toward those types of stories lately either, and probably wouldn’t have read this without my book group motivating me. I’m glad I did, but it was so dark that I probably will hold off a while before reading more by this author.
I haven’t read this, but my work friend recommended it to me. Thanks for the review, Lisa!