Amanda McCrina's Traitor is a tightly woven YA thrill ride exploring political conflict, deep-seated prejudice, and the terror of living in a world where betrayal is a matter of life or death.

Poland, 1944. After the Soviet liberation of Lwów from Germany, the city remains a battleground between resistance fighters and insurgent armies, its loyalties torn between Poland and Ukraine. 

Seventeen-year-old Tolya Korolenko is half Ukrainian, half Polish, and he joined the Soviet Red Army to keep himself alive and fed. When he not-quite-accidentally shoots his unit's political officer in the street, he's rescued by a squad of Ukrainian freedom fighters. They might have saved him, but Tolya doesn't trust them. He especially doesn't trust Solovey, the squad's war-scarred young leader, who has plenty of secrets of his own.

Then a betrayal sends them both on the run. And in a city where loyalty comes second to self-preservation, a traitor can be an enemy or a savior—or sometimes both. 



Traitor is a World War II book. The story starts with Tolya, where we follow him on the night when he comes across a man harassing a woman,bthe man is a important soldier/leader (some happens) and he sneaks back onto the base. When he does he realizes that he's going to have to escape and make a run for it and we follow his journey of what it's like being on the run from a part of his past and another part of his past. There's a lot going on in this book there's a few times I did find myself confused but I did enjoy the characters and learning more about this part of the war of World War II and how it does affect you not just by family and friends dying but mentally, how that leads to other problems; like trusting people, ect. Also what Tolya has to go through being from one country when you're at war and another country that hates his country, and not knowing where he belongs. The main character is from both sides of the war and he battles with identity crisis and what it's like when you can't say that you're from one can't you're not because you're from both side of the war. I enjoy the pacing, there was no part that I was bored at or wasn't slow; every single thing that happened in this book lead or connected to something else somewhere in this book and I really enjoyed how everything was connected. Stories set in War in the past is usually ones I do enjoy I was feeling like I’m leaning and growing. Every time I do read a World War II book I feel like I learn another piece of a puzzle of what it was like back then; the trauma, the sadness and the hardship that people went through, that my ancestors went through and it's just really important of a story to tell. Overall, if you are a fan of historian or war base books, you will enjoy this and you will see another side of the story told.