rfwads 's review for:

Fugitive Colors by Lisa Barr

3.0

dark emotional reflective

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I am a huge fan of Lisa Barr's work, so it pains me to rate Fugitive Colors only three stars. While I enjoyed parts of the book, I just could not get into the story itself. The story had a lot going for it but fell flat in my opinion. I struggled to engage with the characters and felt that the story dragged at times. Through the first part of the book, Lisa Barr slowly builds a back story about her three main characters, and because of this, I found myself getting bored and losing interest. Once I got to the second half of the book, it started to pick up and I saw where Lisa was trying to go with the story.

One thing that I really enjoyed about Fugitive Colors is that it told a different story and perspective about WW2 and the Nazi regime, compared to other historical fiction novels I have read. Fugitive Colors really highlighted artists and what they experienced and went through, along with what happened to famous art during this time. If you are a fan of historical fiction and art, I would recommend reading Fugitive Colors by Lisa Barr.

****

All Yakov Klein wants to do is become an artist. With his parents not accepting his passion, he leaves Chicago and heads to Paris to pursue his dreams. Once in Paris, he rebrands himself as Julian Klein and meets Felix von Bredow, a German aristocrat, and Rene Levi, a young French artist. The trio quickly becomes best friends, until two women — Adrienne a talented French artist, and Charlotte an artist's model and also a prostitute — come in between their friendship. Adrienne is Rene's girlfriend with whom Julian secretly is infatuated with, and then there is Charlotte whom Rene is sleeping with, and Felix is in love with.

With their friendship on rocky terms, the three men head to Germany to study with a famous German expressionist. Once there, Felix is pressured into joining the family business when his father asks for his help to create a plan to destroy Germany’s modern artists, and soon Felix becomes involved with the Nazi party. As the Nazis rise to power what's left of the men's friendship is torn apart. Felix's jealousy toward his friends' artistic talents begins to consume him. Julian is asked to become a German spy. And Rene is feeling the pressure from loved ones to leave Germany and go back to Paris. Meanwhile, Jewish painters are being persecuted and killed and their artwork is being confiscated. Soon the men are caught up in the Nazis' plans to destroy modern art and are in great danger.