On tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club - By Love Divided (The Lydiard Chronicles Book 2) by Elizabeth St.John #HistoricalFiction #EnglishCivilWar @ElizStJohn @maryanneyarde

I am really excited to be hosting another virtual blog tour for The Coffee Pot Book Club. I was asked if I would like to host and review a copy of the second book in Elizabeth St.John's The Lydiard Chronicles series. Having seen Elizabeth St.John's books on Twitter, I jumped at the chance. Before we get to my review let's take a look at the blurb and the cover. 

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.

My Review

I have to be honest, I know very little about the English Civil War other than there was a tremendous loss of life on both sides, and that Charles I was executed, however it is a period that I always wanted to learn about. So when I read the premise of this book my curiosity was piqued. I was slightly concerned because I have not read the first book in this series, but I soon realised, to my delight, that By Love Divided stands alone, and very soon I found myself caught up in the lives of the St.Johns. 

This novel is based on the author's own ancestors, and I think Lucy and her family would have been very proud and honoured that their story has been told in such mesmerising detail, and in such a wonderfully compelling way. 

I have read some wonderful books this year, but I think By Love Divided is my favourite. It really is a book in a million.

Elizabeth St.John is a new author for me, but if this book is anything to go by then her books will not be strangers to my reading nook!

Buy this Book you won't be disappointed!

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Elizabeth St.John

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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