Not my favorite of Ruta Sepetys'. Compared to Fountain of Silence or I Must Betray You it felt very basic. It also felt like at times nothing was happening. 

A very, very well researched book. However, it was so full of examples it was hard to keep track of the main argument or even what a particular section was on. 

This was a memoir but didn't feel like one. The first 100 or so pages are a disjointed genealogical story of Faust's family. But even as we get to the history she lived, it feels like it's being told from the clinical eye of a historian - it reads much more like a history of the times (and not a well-written one) than a memoir. I couldn't get over the detached writing. 

This is a really hard book to rate. It was very, very slow going for the first 200 pages because of how violent and dark the memoir was. But then as Collins started to come out of the IRA and spent his time in prison, the pace seemed to pick up. I do wish there had been an afterword added after Collins was murdered.