You will find it hard to put down Lovely War by Julie Berry! The book is a combination of historical fiction and myth. The Greek gods Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Ares, Hades, and Apollo appear in the 1940s, as Aphrodite is found secretly meeting with her lover Ares. Stalling for time, Aphrodite recounts what she calls “the love story of the century.” The gods interrupt each other and talk over each other to jointly tell the World War I story of two couples: Hazel and James, and Collette and Aubrey.
Red shouldn’t have picked up the letter. Shouldn’t have betrayed her people. Shouldn’t have replied. But she did, and now nothing will ever be the same again. Red is a time traveler working for the Agency, a technotopia, while Blue is an agent for the Garden, a vast, organic entity rooted in nature. As rivals, they travel through strands of alternate realities and dimensions, influencing them to guide the path of the future in an all-encompassing war. They were made to be enemies — so why does it feel so right when they craft the words that bridge the untraversable gap between them?
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins is a prequel to the famous Hunger Games series. The novel follows President Snow during his youth, before he became a ruthless power-hungry leader. Coriolanus Snow is an eighteen year old boy living in the Capitol. The Hunger Games is a new concept in which the twelve districts are punished by having to sacrifice two children to fight to the death amongst the other eleven districts.
In If You Come Softly, Jeremiah and Ellie are seen by society to be on opposite poles, however through clashing events, their worlds collide. Ellie, a Jewish American girl is learning of Jeremiah’s African American culture. During that time, they are faced with backlash from others that continuously attempt to separate them. Despite this, the pair manages to fall in love and become an interracial couple. Across many obstacles, the pair still believes that they fit perfectly in each other’s worlds.
The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories by Simon Rich is a collection of eclectic and often surreal short stories centering around love and romance. For the most part, I very much enjoyed this book.
