It usually takes me around 50 pages or so to get acquainted with a story, the characters and setting. Julie Berry, I'm not sure what magic you cast over me but please never stop. This book is narrated by greek gods, but are we sure it isn't written by one too? Lovely War feels as if it is on a plane higher than us mere mortals.

With additional testimony from Ares (war), and ultimately, Apollo (art) and Hades (death), the gods' stories explore how far hope can reach into the abyss of wartime destruction and despair, and whether, in a broken world, there's still a case to be made for love.

Aphrodite, as the defendant in a mock courtroom trial, spins the intertwined stories of both pairs of star-crossed lovers in a plea to soften her husband's anger. Aubrey, a Harlem ragtime musician, and Colette, a Belgian refugee who has lost everything to the war, meet in a YMCA relief hut at the American training base at Saint-Nazaire, France.Īphrodite and Ares meet for a secret tryst in a Manhattan hotel room, only to be caught and exposed by Hephaestus, the goddess of love's jealous husband. Hazel, a pianist, and James, a builder-turned-soldier, meet at a London dance in late 1917, on the eve of his departure for the trenches of World War I. The year-plus I spent researching, writing, and revising it was intense, and harrowing at times, but I'm thrilled with where we landed. :) I can't wait to share it with the world. I did write it, so the possibility of bias is real. She seeks to answer the age-old question: Why are Love and War eternally drawn to one another? But her quest for a conclusion that will satisfy her jealous husband uncovers a multi-threaded tale of prejudice, trauma, and music and reveals that War is no match for the power of Love.Ī sweeping, multi-layered romance with a divine twist, by the Printz Honor-winning author of The Passion of Dolssa, set in the perilous days of World Wars I and II. Thirty years after these four lovers' fates collide, the Greek goddess Aphrodite tells their stories to her husband, Hephaestus, and her lover, Ares, in a luxe Manhattan hotel room at the height of World War II. But that's before he meets Colette Fournier, a Belgian chanteuse who's already survived unspeakable tragedy at the hands of the Germans. A gifted musician who's played Carnegie Hall, he's a member of the 15th New York Infantry, an all-African-American regiment being sent to Europe to help end the Great War. When they fall in love, it's immediate and deep-and cut short when James is shipped off to the killing fields.Īubrey Edwards is also headed toward the trenches. She's a shy and talented pianist he's a newly minted soldier with dreams of becoming an architect.

It's 1917, and World War I is at its zenith when Hazel and James first catch sight of each other at a London party.

The lovely war by julie berry