by Mari Pizzini– Spring Break, Corona-cation, or whatever you want to call the last few weeks has been pretty scary, but also pretty boring. However, as an English major I’ve found this time to be pretty darn good for catching up on some “summer” reads.
Julie Berry’s Lovely War has all the components I am usually interested in: history of the first and second world wars, some type of romance, magic or the supernatural (in this case, mainly Greek mythology), and a chronological storyline.
Bingo: a pretty neatly packed book.
When I started reading, I was honestly confused for the first three pages. The storyline just wasn’t what I was expecting, but I chose to give the book another chance and continue reading. In my opinion, that was a great choice.
The epic, fast-and-furious love story was too quickly ended by the call to war, but that allowed the story to morph into two love stories. The more the merrier, right?
Aphrodite, goddess of love, did her part while Ares, god of war, did his. The novel showed the clash between these two opposite forces from two different perspectives: gods and mortals.
As the novel came to an end, Apollo, god of art, and Hades, god of the Underworld, came to play their roles. PTSD, the importance of art and music, race and social structure, and the power of love and war meshed to build one pretty incredible story.
I won’t lie, there was a storyline that I was completely uninterested in until it merged with its other half. For that story, I skimmed its chapters for the first 80 pages of the book. Otherwise, I was pretty enthralled with the novel.
Overall, I’d give Lovely War 8 of 10 piano keys, and you’ll just have to read the book to know what that means.
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