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I Must Betray You was my third book that I have read by Ruta Sepetys. As in her past novels of historical fiction, her research was impeccable and impressive. I listened to the audiobook of I Must Betray You that was brilliantly performed by Edoardo Ballerini. All my emotions were awakened and touched as I listened to this gripping yet heart wrenching story about what the citizens of Romania endured under the tyranny of Nikolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elana. I Must Betray You triggered memories of watching the summer Olympics when Romanian born Nadia Comaneci competed in the late 1970’s. The fact that she was from Romania meant nothing to me at that time. Then news about Nadia’s defection to the United States was made public. After reading I Must Betray You, I realized how difficult, fearful and guarded Nadia’s life must have been as a young gymnast athlete living in Romania under the Communist regime of Ceausescu. The day to day life in Romania during Nicolas Ceausescu’s unrelenting tyranny was vividly described through the voice and eyes of a young seventeen year old boy, Christian Florescu, in the pages of I Must Betray You. Ceausescu’s regime never discriminated by age or gender when it came to who the Securitate chose to be their informants. The people of Bucharest lived in constant fear, were always hungry, lived in poverty and never knew who could be trusted. Christian secretly kept a journal that described in detail the horrendous conditions the Romanian people were forced to endure day in and day out. He wrote how he was forced to become an informant so his beloved grandfather could continue to receive the medicine he required that would keep him alive. There were spies lurking around every corner. People were not safe to voice their fears or opinions out loud for fear they were being secretly spied upon. Nicolae Ceausescu had totally fooled the world and their leaders about life in Romania. He managed to conceal the conditions and fear the Romanian people were living under and with. The feared Securitate even pinned one family member against another. They would stop at nothing to bully the people of Romania into getting the information they desired. In stark contrast, as poor and suppressed as the Romanian people were, Ceausescu lived with freedom and wealth. No one in the world had an inkling about the life the Romanian people led. Christian hoped his journal could be secretly taken out of Romania and be read so that others could finally witness, understand and hopefully want to help change the stark realities of how the Romanian people were forced to live.

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys allowed me to visualize the sterile gray cement blocks where the majority of Romanians lived in the poorest of conditions, not knowing when the electricity or heat might be turned off, standing in line after line of food queues for hours at a time for meager food allotments and the fear and repression felt by all. Ruta Sepetys expertly opened my eyes to the tyranny of the Ceausescu regime that lasted from 1965 to 1989. Finally, the people of Romania having had enough of Ceausescu and Communism united and revolted. The Romanian Revolution put an end to the years of Communist rule and ended by executing both Ceausescu and his equally evil wife, Elena. Ruta Sepetys personally added a historical end note at the conclusion of the audiobook that was both informative and enlightening. With all that is occurring in the lives and country of the Ukrainian people today this book becomes even that more important to read. I Must Betray You was fast paced and pulled me in immediately to the suffering the Romanian people underwent. I highly recommend this book.