Pick an adjective — sweeping, sprawling, epic, Olympian — and yet none quite conveys the emotional width and depth of Julie Berry’s brilliant new novel ... Berry is a master at weaving disparate elements to craft a truly original story populated with characters who will take up permanent residence in readers’ hearts and minds. Berry also doesn’t neglect the need for some levity, and readers will be especially amused by the Immortals’ snarky comments and constant competition with one another ... a uniquely multilayered novel that readers will be reluctant to conclude. Though Lovely War is being marketed to teens, adults looking for a memorable, well-told tale should not be shy about delving in, too.

The bickering gods, romantic rendezvous and exploding shells, set against impeccably rendered Paris streets and sandbagged trenches, read like a divine mix of Kate Atkinson and Neil Gaiman. When the hurly-burly’s done, and the battle’s lost and won, does Love conquer War? The answer is never in doubt, but it’s a pleasure to have it confirmed by a celestially inspired storyteller.

In hands less skilled than Berry’s, this multifaceted novel might easily have spun out of control. Mixing Greek gods, the brutally described horrors of war, the tenderness of love, and the evils of racism, in both its blatant and insidious forms, seems more than one book can handle. Yet Berry is her own Scheherazade, mesmerizing us with intertwined tales that describe the depths of suffering and the sweetness of love with remarkable intensity and naturalness. This is one of those books in which readers will feel that they are in it together with all the story’s characters. In fact, it is one of Berry’s real triumphs that she manages to give nearly equal weight to a large cast of very different characters ... This is not particularly a young adult book. Every emotion, description, and literary sleight-of-hand could just as easily be in an adult novel. And that is one of Berry’s greatest strengths. She just writes ... proves again that Berry is one of our most ambitious writers. Happily for us, that ambition so often results in great success.

Berry [is] a modern master of historical fiction for young readers ... While the device of using the gods as narrators could take away from the main characters for some, Berry’s superb research and attention to detail are perfectly suited to the layers of this story of love in wartime. The scenes revealing the complex web of trenches inhabited by the British soldiers, the effects of post traumatic stress disorder, and the racial injustice and brutality in the American barracks and camps are particularly excellent. Fans of Marcus Sedgwick, Lois Lowry and Elizabeth Wein will love this romantic yet unflinching look at teenagers coming of age during World War I.

Whatever muse is singing in Berry to produce her lyrical writing, we’d like to lobby for their services. The story itself is intoxicating ... Her research is impeccable, but it never overrides the breathless sensation that we are accompanying the gods along on a wisp of air, flitting in and out of the tragedies and triumphs of these individual’s lives. Occasionally, the other gods’ reactions to Aphrodite’s stories, their tears in particular, feel manufactured, outweighing the response of the reader. It’s hard to know if that’s intentional or a clever bit of emotional manipulation designed to make a reader feel a moment more deeply ... The narrative framework and the themes Berry explores through these icons of mythology pack more of a punch than the individual details of these lovers’ lives ... a gripping wartime love story, but it’s also an original, breathtaking examination of how humanity’s ills, from violence to racism, are conquered by our better tendencies ... a compelling take on fate, loss, and hope — and how when everything else hangs in the balance, love resounds as the most complicated, mystifying, resilient force of all.

The narration by the Greek gods provides an original style of storytelling ...The horrors of the time and the ends to which the characters strive to maintain something wonderful in their lives attest to the research the author completed to weave such a heart-achingly beautiful story. This book is for anyone who has loved historical fiction by Ruta Sepetys or Alan Gratz. It’s just gorgeous.

An epic of Shakespearean emotional depth and arresting visual imagery that nonetheless demonstrates the racism and sexism of the period. Scheherazade has nothing on Berry whose acute eye for detail renders the glittering lights of Paris as dreamlike in their beauty as the soul-sucking trenches on the French front are nightmarishly real. The mortal characters are all vibrant, original, and authentic, but none is more captivating than the goddess of love herself, who teaches her husband that love is an art form worthy of respect and admiration ... An unforgettable romance so Olympian in scope, human at its core, and lyrical in its prose that it must be divinely inspired.

Berry’s evocative novel starts slow but gains steam as the stories flesh out. Along the way, it suggests that while war and its devastation cycles through history, the forces of art and love remain steady, eternal, and life-sustaining.