While the book is pegged to life in the Soviet Union around the time that Mikhail Bulgakov published his masterpiece The Master and Margarita, there’s something amazingly timely about the way Julie Lekstrom Himes approaches censorship and the struggle to retain what you want most in life when everything is working against you. It’s an incredibly important read in an era of uncertainty and populism across the globe, but it’s also entertainment in its purest form as it draws the reader in through the emotional resonance of love and loss while retaining a sense of “it could happen to you.”
