I was immediately hooked in by McCrina’s writing style — typically, I am not a fan of books with first-person writing, but the way we are introduced to Maria and see her thoughts, especially in interaction with a Soviet in the first scene, shows just enough about her for the reader to crave more. The second chapter is even more thrilling, leaving the reader to wonder about the tense atmosphere prevalent in the lives of every character. It seems as if we are meant to dislike some characters more than others, but the way they are written simply makes them seem “gray;” some moral middleground where the reader wants to know more about the characters before deciding anything.