Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Lovely War by Julie Berry

3 reviews

juanat77's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Racial slurs, Sexual assault, Violence, Gore, Alcohol, Hate crime, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Cursing, Infidelity, Fire/Fire injury, Gun violence, Racism, Blood, Death, War, Abandonment, Body horror, Bullying, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Mental illness, Pregnancy, and Sexism

cameronreads's review against another edition

4.0

If you ever read a fiction book about war, let it be this one. The story telling was so clever and interesting, and the book truly captures the horrors of war and racism as well as the wonders of love and music. I did in fact cry. 
Also, the narration of the audiobook was wonderful, with a different narrator for each God. I’d recommend if you like audiobooks!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Sexism, Murder, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Racism, Sexual assault, War, Grief, Violence, Gun violence, and Hate crime

Minor: Death of parent, Medical content, Vomit, and Alcohol

nebraskanwriter's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I really wanted to like this story more. But this book is SO long and I felt like the gods being a part of the story, in theory sounds really interesting, but the way Berry goes about it by having Aphrodite be on trial made the story convoluted, for me at least. I don’t get why there had to be alternating timelines, one from the first World War wherein we have our four mortal main characters and one timeline from the second World War when Aphrodite is on trial, it just felt disjointed to me. Why have the second timeline at all? Just tell the first timeline from the POV of the gods, no need for Aphrodite to be on trial in a separate time period, it just made no sense to me and I feel like made the book more longwinded then it needed to be.

I did love the build up of the two couple’s relationships, how Berry covers what many people went through during the war in these four main characters. However, the ending felt so rushed. We have almost 500 pages of build up to find out what happened to them in like 5 pages at the end of the book, summarized very briefly by the gods.

I loved the journey, the fleshing out of the characters, peeling back the grim layers of war and not shying away from the army’s racism but rather shining a light on it. I loved the history, the feelings of first love and second chances after one had maybe lost their first love. That I loved, it’s just a shame the ending was so rushed kind of helter-skelter like otherwise I probably would have rated it higher.

Berry definitely did her research for this book, I will say that for sure. There is a historical note in the back where she sites many books and a bibliography as well. So that was not a miss, the care in which she took to tell multiple sides of the war (both without and within) must be acknowledged. 

But pacing was this book’s downfall, too long and convoluted to get to such a lackluster ending… 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Classism, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Gun violence, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, War, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, Pregnancy, Violence, Abandonment, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Blood, Bullying, Confinement, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Grief, Death, and Hate crime