Wow. I have literally just put the book down and all I can say is wow.

This book is special. A YA historical fiction with pace, understanding and raw emotion. I was pretty much hooked from the outset. I have to say, I haven't read a book like this before. I was a little unsure of what to expect and how the issues could be covered meaningfully whilst sticking to the YA feel. But the author has reached near perfection.

Let's start with the characters. Christi is genuine and likeable. He is someone you can't help but root for. He is flawed and at times he does seem younger than his years, but in some respects I wonder if this doesn't reflect the decade and the life a 17 year old would live in Romania. Bunu was so real and so alive. I was horrified by his fate, but heartened by the note he left and the words of the stranger in the crowd. Christi's father's awakening was also timely and felt important. It wasn't big, but it marked a shift in mood. Cici; well, I'm lost for words. Let's just say, you have to read the epilogue. Or maybe you don't. Thinking about it now I wonder if it isn't like the question Christi poses - is it indeed better to know? And his mum. I had guessed as much. She was a character I never quite warmed to.

It wasn't just the characters which were good, the pace was blazing. I literally read this in two sittings. It was told at blistering speed and in vivid technicolor. I was transported to the scene and I can honestly say my heart was racing in the final chapters.

I don't think I will forget about this book. It's the kind of book which makes anything else seem dull and so I'm not really sure I should read anything else just yet. People always talk about books you can't out down, well this is one. You want to race to the end, but your heart aches as you turn the final page.

This book deserves to be read. These people deserve to be remembered.

Harrowing and illuminating account of the Romanian totalitarian rebellion.

Like many others, this is a regime I hadn't learned about, either through schooling or my own reading. Like Communist China or Russia, the human stories are what pull you into the history and horrors, and Sepetys does a superb job in showing us the conditions, the mental torture and the inhumanity of this particular place and time.

It's sick, when you look at it. A country of people all spying on each other. Family, friends, colleagues, forced to report on each other's activities for 'rewards' (i.e. not being thrown in prison, or for essential supplies). Cristian is 17 and living in totalitarian-controlled Romania when he finds himself 'outed' for an infraction, and told he too must become an informer.

He has lived his whole life under the regime of the Hero leader and his wife, living in ghetto-like housing, queueing for rationed (and minimal) food, yet it is only the potential reward of medicine for his grandfather dying from leukaemia that pushes him to accept.

Watching Cristian and his friends try to be teenagers while still turning on taps to hide their conversations, avoid bugged telephones and hide their illicit Coca Cola drinking in dark alleys, it's upsetting. A bittersweet smile came to my lips watching a group of adolescents crowd illegally into a living room to watch a dubbed copy of Die Hard.

Cristian's grandfather is the voice of reason, of the people, of the revolution, in almost every phrase he utters. Wise and old, you can see he knows he's going to get in trouble but is past caring and knows what is right and what is not. His influence on Cristian is explicit.

There is a lot to see - the effect of the regime on all members of a family, what happens when someone dies, how relationships can possibly spring up despite everything, what happens to friendships when tested... Cristian has sister, friend, potential girlfriend, he has those he is meant to spy on. We experience a full world of Romania.

And then we also see Revolution. It's not pretty. I actually teared up in the final third, it was horrific. Warning here: some fairly graphic scenes of violence ahead. But credit to the author, nothing is shied away from. Happy endings didn't really happen.

The author shares at the end her writing of the book, that many who lived through these times shared their stories and that these fed into her writing. It feels authentically captured, and I imagine many like myself will take the internet to research this for themselves and feel stunned it wasn't on their radar before now.

A piece of history in fiction, teenagers will empathise with those not so different from themselves but be forced to see what the world has done and continues to do when we allow this to happen.

Powerful, upsetting and very well written. For ages 14+ ideally.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.