My Rating: 4 stars
This was a delightful read, one that I was a bit
apprehensive going into it, but ended up really enjoying! The premise of
the story is a unique one: two young couples — Hazel and James, Colette and
Aubrey — fall in love amongst the turbulence of World War I, their story
narrated not by any human characters, but rather by a few famous gods and
goddesses from Greek mythology. After being caught by her husband
Hephaestus in an affair with a fellow god (Ares, god of war), Aphrodite, the
goddess of love, seeks to avoid judgment on Mount Olympus by spinning the story
of these 2 couples and the love that they share despite the world around them descending
into chaos. But yet, this story isn’t just
about love — it is also about the bonds of friendship and the unifying power of
music, about courage in the face of adversity and destruction, about the
possibility of hope after heartbreak, resilience after devastation. Ultimately, in a battle of Love versus War, will
Love triumph or will War succeed in destroying everything in its path?
This book is largely categorized as historical fiction,
but at the same time, it can also be appropriately grouped under romance, YA,
and fantasy. I will be honest in saying that, based on these
genres, this is a book that I probably would not have picked up on my own to
read due to the fact that, while I love historical fiction (and the author,
Julie Berry, certainly did a great job with the historical elements in here –
there were ample historical details but not to the point of dragging down the
story), I’m not too keen on the other 3 genres.
I don’t read much YA because I’m not the target audience for that genre
and so I usually find it harder to appreciate the story and characters; with
romance, I can be quite picky and usually don’t handle “overly sappy” stories well;
and with fantasy, that’s just not really my thing. But given that this was the May selection for
one of my book clubs, plus the story sounded interesting based on the summary
and it came highly recommended by trusted friends, I decided to give this one a
try and hope for the best. Well, this
book ended up surprising me, but in a good way – all the genres blended
together really well, the story was engaging, and the writing was lovely, but
most important for me were the characters, all of whom I couldn’t help but love
dearly. It’s not often that I feel like
I don’t want a story to end because I want to keep reading about these
characters and spend more time with them – this was definitely one of those
instances!
One thing that I think has to be mentioned, especially
since the entire premise of the book hinges on this aspect, is the Greek
mythology angle and the unique structure of having Aphrodite and the other gods
narrate the main characters’ stories. From
the various reviews, this aspect seemed to be a mixed bag in that it worked for
some people but not for others. For me
personally, it worked really well – in fact, I loved the cleverness of the way
Berry structured the story, with having the appropriate god or goddess narrate
the chapters based on their areas of expertise (for example – the chapters
heavy on music were narrated by Apollo, the ones that revolved around the war
battles were narrated by Ares, sections related to death or injury were
narrated by Hades, and of course, the overall love story with the main
characters was narrated by Aphrodite). Perhaps
it is because I already had a certain familiarity with Greek mythology going
into this, since I had studied it extensively back in my school days (albeit
that was eons ago), so it helped me appreciate those aspects in a way that I
probably would not have otherwise. With
that said though, in terms of the sections where the gods (and goddess)
interacted with each other, while I did find some of their banter funny, it got
a bit old after a while, which made me somewhat impatient for them to get back
to the actual story.
The other thing that I felt this book did really well was
balance – parts of the book were fun to read but the parts related to the war
and its aftermath as well as other historical events were treated seriously as
it needed to be. The story itself had
substance, yet it wasn’t dense to the point of being overly complicated or hard
to follow. This is one of those books
that manages to blend the YA and adult aspects pretty well, without sacrificing
the elements that also make this a worthwhile historical fiction read. Definitely recommended!
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