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Wednesday, December 9, 2020

My review of By Love Divided (The Lydiard Chronicles Book 2) by Elizabeth St.John @ElizStJohn @maryanneyarde

 



By Love Divided
(The Lydiard Chronicles Book 2)
By Elizabeth St.John


London, 1630. 

Widowed and destitute, Lucy St.John is fighting for survival and makes a terrible choice to secure a future for her children. Worse still, her daughter Luce rejects the royal court and a wealthy arranged marriage, and falls in love with a charismatic soldier. As England tumbles toward bloody civil war, Luce’s beloved brother Allen chooses to fight for the king as a cavalier. Allen and Luce are swept up in the chaos of war as they defend their opposing causes and protect those they love.

Will war unite or divide them? And will they find love and a home to return to—if they survive the horror of civil war. In the dawn of England’s great rebellion, love is the final battleground.

A true story based on surviving memoirs, court papers, and letters of Elizabeth St.John's family, By Love Divided tells of the war-time experiences of Lucy St.John, the Lady of the Tower. This powerfully emotional novel tells of England's great divide and the heart-wrenching choices one family faces.

Book Title: By Love Divided
Series: The Lydiard Chronicles, Book 2
Author: Elizabeth St.John
Published: October 2017
Publisher: Falcon Historical
Page Length: 381 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction


MY THOUGHTS!

Set during the English Civil War, Ms St.John has presented her readers with a book that leaves a lasting impression in one's heart. The brutalities of war, the emotional trauma of watching as your family is torn apart by political ideas and beliefs means that this novel not only tugs at the reader's heartstrings, but also demands to be read in one sitting - a feat I achieved by staying up to the early hours of the morning to read it - but this book demands such tender devotion, for the story is enthralling and the characters unforgettable. 

Lucy Apsley is a heroine who my heart really went out to. Thanks to King Charles and his reluctance to repay her late husband's generous loans, Lucy is on the brink of losing everything. Lucy sees only one option to her dilemma, and that is to marry. Oh, what a terrible situation to be in and although I have often read historical fiction where the woman is forced to marry to secure her financial position, the fact that Lucy is the author's ancestor made this very personal. It made Lucy's plight, all the more tragic. But I was encouraged by Lucy's strength of character, and she is a woman that I really came to admire as this story progressed.

This story is told through different points of view, so this is a very rounded account of the lead up to the civil war and the war itself. This approach I thought worked remarkable well, and I came away from this novel, having a more profound sense of what this time in history was like. Likewise, the historical backdrop of this novel is spectacular. Everything about this book screamed realism, and with that in mind, I would recommend having some tissues close to hand.

This book, these characters, really captured my heart. I will certainly be reading more books by this author. 


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Elizabeth St.John

Elizabeth St.John spends her time between California, England, and the past. An acclaimed author, historian, and genealogist, she has tracked down family papers and residences from Lydiard Park and Nottingham Castle to Richmond Palace and the Tower of London to inspire her novels. Although the family sold a few country homes along the way (it's hard to keep a good castle going these days), Elizabeth's family still occupy them-- in the form of portraits, memoirs, and gardens that carry their legacy. And the occasional ghost. But that's a different story.

Having spent a significant part of her life with her seventeenth-century family while writing The Lydiard Chronicles trilogy and Counterpoint series, Elizabeth St.John is now discovering new family stories with her fifteenth-century namesake Elysabeth St.John Scrope, and her half-sister, Margaret Beaufort. A new medieval short story featuring these women, Road to the Tower, is within the recently-published Historical Fiction anthology Betrayal.

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