Lovely War Book Review

Textbooks are cold and often heartless, whereas fiction is anything but. Historical fiction is dedicated to breathing life into the stories we learn so much about in high school, and no one does it better than Julie Berry in Lovely War. With fantasy elements, heart-pounding moments, and tear-inducing endings, Lovely War is the true, soulful, and passionate story of how young love survives in a world torn apart by hatred and greed. 

Julie Berry is the author of the 2017 Printz Honor and Los Angeles Times Book Prize shortlisted novel The Passion of Dolssa, the Carnegie and Edgar shortlisted All the Truth That's in Me, and many other acclaimed middle grade novels and picture books. She holds a BS in communication from Rensselaer and an MFA from Vermont College. She lives in Southern California with her family. You can find Julie at julieberrybooks.com. 

In the perilous days of World Wars I and II, the gods held the fates -- and the hearts -- of four mortals in their hands. Hazel, James, Aubrey, and Colette. A classical pianist from London, a British would-be architect turned soldier, a Harlem-born ragtime genius in the US Army, and a Belgian orphan with a gorgeous voice and a devastating past. Their story, as told by the goddess Aphrodite, who must spin the tale or face judgment on Mount Olympus, is filled with hope and heartbreak, prejudice and passion, and reveals that, though war is a formidable force, it's no match for the transcendent power of love. 

Aphrodite was a brilliant narrator, and got me completely hooked and invested in Hazel and James from the start. Berry weaves a tale of love within the first few pages of the novel, and from the beginning we know this will be a love story for the ages. I appreciated Berry's in-depth dive into Hazel's and James's brains during the opening crucial moments of their whirlwind relationship. Because the love was very insta-love-esque, it was helpful to truly "pick the brains" of Hazel and James as they spend their first few days together. Berry does a wonderful job balancing the realities of war with the ideologies of love throughout Hazel's and James's story. There were parts that made me smile and cheer for them, and parts where I almost genuinely broke into tears. Berry is able to give life to the history we read in textbooks, or to give stories to the people in old photographs. Hazel is the character I related to most, who never wanted trouble with anybody, and who always wanted a happy ending. Her character truly grew throughout the course of the novel, and it was a delight to see her become more bold, especially when she learned that rules are not always meant to be followed (especially the unjust ones). I also enjoyed Berry's deep-dives into life in the trenches through James's points of view. These portions, narrated by Ares, told the unflinching, heartbreaking, devastating, heart-pounding moments of soldiers on the front lines, and sacrificing everything for nations who consider them numbers. Berry crafted a beautiful love story between Hazel and James -- my favorite parts, particularly, included the parts about scars. How can two young people who really haven't spent all that much time together just know they're right for one another, when they're no longer as young or beautiful as they were when they first met? This was the question that, for me, lay deep at the heart of Hazel's and James's romance and character arcs, and I enjoyed following their storyline since the second Aphrodite introduced them as one half of the subject of her great epic. 

By spending so much time with Hazel and James at the beginning of the novel, Berry knows that it's going to be difficult for readers to turn their eyes away from the pair and towards a new couple. The only way to invest us into Colette's and Aubrey's story is to make their love more difficult, and for there to be more hurdles we want them to overcome. Berry succeeds in having Colette, a Belgian woman who's lost her entire family, finally lay eyes on Aubrey, a black pianist from Harlem who's come to Europe to fight for his country despite the way his country treats him. Already there are struggles for Aubrey and Colette to even be in the same physical space with one another, before their story has truly begun. I found Aubrey's and Colette's stories to be far more compelling than those of Hazel's and James's. Because they faced more hardships, I wished more of the book was dedicated to their love story and hurdles. Most of the novel is spent on Hazel and James, and Colette and Aubrey get less attention overall despite the complexities of their respective stories. I would have liked a deeper dive into the mental tensions and health of Colette and Aubrey after their respective traumas, much like how James got a lot of page time exploring his new normal after time in the trenches. Berry does a wonderful job addressing racial tensions and related violence in WWI in this novel, and she is well-read in the history to get these parts of the story right, at exactly the right heartbreaking moments. Berry was able to breathe life into the history we always just learned about in passing, and gave humanity to the cold and often short textbook pages addressing the history of the black regiments in World War I. Yet, it still felt like a step backwards to still have Hazel and James always at the forefront, whereas Colette and Aubrey could have been forgotten, or seen as less important overall. I felt this way, mostly, because Aphrodite didn't fight for Colette and Aubrey the same ways we see her fighting for Hazel and James. While she fought pretty hard to be able to tie in Colette's and Aubrey's stories, she didn't push Colette and Aubrey together as hard as she pushed Hazel and James together. I'll never know if this was intentional, or if Hazel and James were truly meant to just be the stars, but I needed to comment on this regardless. I loved Hazel and James's love story, don't get me wrong -- I just wish, with the overall more-complex narratives surrounding Colette and Aubrey, that Berry would have dedicated more time to this pair, along with the time she spent exploring music in love and war, racial injustices in love and war, and humanity in love and war. 

I would be the first to tell you that there's a lot of World War centric historical fiction out there. While most stories take different angles, follow characters of different nationalities, and thus try to build their own story, most authors are for sure constricted to the very real timeline of the World Wars. That being said, I do believe that Julie Berry brought us something refreshing, delightful, and necessary with Lovely War, specifically in how she focused on race, told the story from the gods' point of views, and gave some unexpected content. I adored the division of the book itself, into acts/entr'acts, and overture/exit music, as if suggesting that the book itself was an opera. This division also highlighted the importance of music in the story, and the importance of emotions driving plot. While the writing itself can get cheesy (it is a love story narrated by none other than Aphrodite in the middle of World War I), I was very invested very fast in Hazel's and Colette's stories, and whether or not James and Aubrey would make it home to them. Berry truly relies on emotions of her characters to tell the story, which thus makes readers like myself deeply invested in the outcome of those stories. Lastly, I loved how the story itself was narrated by the Greek gods Aphrodite, Ares, Apollo, and Hades. I thought that was an exciting new way to tell a story, and it was interesting to see Berry's interpretations of the Greek gods and how they involve themselves with mortals. It's exciting to see the love triangle dynamic of Aphrodite, Ares, and Hephaestus portrayed in this way, because it's not related to Percy Jackson, and also because Berry breathes life into mythology we all know about yet rarely discuss. Because of this angle, most have classified Lovely War as having fantasy and magical realism elements. I don't think it could fully stand in those genres, only because the novel and story itself is very rooted in the war, no matter Aphrodite's or Hades's influences in plot or emotions. I digress though, that this book would have been completely different without the gods' narrations, so I've added those genre tags to this post. This book, for me, has truly opened my understanding of how a writer can blend genres, and the opportunities available in fiction to take specific elements of one genre and fold them in with another. Overall, Julie Berry gives us a master piece with Lovely War, and I believe it is very deserving of its National Bestseller status. 

For more from Julie Berry, visit her website at julieberrybooks.com!

*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*