ZoesArtCraftandLife: Welcoming Elizabeth St John and her book - By Love Divided

Today I'm welcoming Elizabeth St John and her book - By Love Divided (Book 2 - The Lydiard Chronicles) - to my blog as part of the blog tour hosted by The Coffee Pot Book Club (founded by Mary Anne Yarde).

I'm delighted to share a review with you all, but first I will introduce the book.

By Love Divided

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.

Published: October 2017

Publisher: Falcon Historical

Page Length: 381 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

You can purchase a copy of the book via -

Amazon: https://geni.us/MyBookBLD

Books2Read: https://books2read.com/u/3kpQYg

Now for the review.

Her late husband had been a royalist, her new one was a puritan – that in itself is a story worth reading, but then to see your family torn apart as sides are chosen in the lead up to the English Civil War takes this book to a whole new level. I thought I would enjoy By Love Divided, but enjoy does not even encompass the way I feel about this book now that I have finished it. Based on real people and historical fact, Elizabeth St.John has written a book that is something very extraordinary indeed.

The story centres around Lucy St.John and her family, but this novel is not told from just Lucy's points of view, it is told through the collective narrative of all the members of the family. By using this approach Elizabeth St.John does not ask her readers to choose a side, she does not ask you to stand with King Charles, or to stand with Parliament because there are characters that she knows her readers will come to care about on both sides of the battle lines. Like Lucy, we must somehow find the courage to face what is to come and pray that everyone makes it through the coming war unscathed. This is a novel that I would recommend having some tissues close to hand, and be prepared to become utterly enthralled in the story, for the narrative is rich and compelling, and I am sure you will fall in love with the characters just as I have.

Dear Readers, this is a book that deserves all the acclaim that it has received. It is so rich in history, story and legitimacy that I could not help but fall under its spell. I cannot wait to get my hands on Book 3, because I really want to know how Lucy and her family’s story ends.

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.

You can connect with Elizabeth St John via -

Website: http://www.elizabethjstjohn.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElizStJohn

Amazon Author Page: http://www.tinyurl.com/AmazonElizStJohn

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethJStJohn/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elizabethjstjohn/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48503349-by-love-divided

You can learn more about the author and the book by visiting the other blogs on this tour.