Just kind of lost interest as the book went on… it’s HEAVILY geared towards US audiences who know nothing about a) Romania or b) life under communism, and as someone with a fair amount of background knowledge that got annoying very quickly. Also Cristi is maybe a good representation of a teenager but also infuriating - naive, pretentious, and frankly a bit bland overall. The characters all seemed pretty one dimensional. The narration also bothered me; the protagonist keeps commenting stuff like “oh I was so stupid”, which doesn’t really add much to the narrative and also takes all the tension and suspense out of the story. Overall it just kind of feels like a well researched book but clearly written by someone who is trying *really* hard to represent something they didn’t personally experience.  The book isn’t bad. It just didn’t grip me enough to make me finish it.