Editorial Review: War Serenade by Jill Wallace

 

★★★★★

Review:

This is an editorial review written for Reader's Favorite.

War Serenade by Jill Wallace is a touching love story between an Italian prisoner of war and a young woman in South Africa during World War II. Pietro was a famous opera singer in Italy despite his low birth prior to being conscripted into the Italian military. After his plane is shot down, he finds himself in a prisoner-of-war camp in South Africa. By chance, he meets Iris, a young woman working in the hospital, and both of them are stricken by love at first sight. Iris aspires to be a costume designer in America and has been invited to work in Hollywood. Pietro is the enemy, and forming a relationship with him could cost her her future career and possibly even her life, but Iris can’t dismiss her attraction to the foreigner.

 Based on a true story, War Serenade will renew your belief in love at first sight. If you have ever felt a connection with someone after just making eye contact or a brief touch of the hand, you will understand the depth of feeling of the characters. I found myself on edge, worried about their safety and the welfare of those who aided them. Despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Pietro and Iris will risk anything to be together. A lover of World War II fiction, I have never come across a book that was based in South Africa during the war. Readers of World War II fiction will surely feel as invigorated as I did while reading about the period in a new setting.

 Peter Noble narrates this audiobook, and his skill would lead the listener to believe that a full cast was employed to do the task. He skillfully reads in several dialects, including South African, Italian, Zulu, and Afrikaans, even blending an Afrikaans influence into a South African dialect for some characters. His extensive travel and training have clearly rendered him a master of speech. Jill Wallace's website reveals that her choice of the narrator was quite serendipitous; she later discovered that his mother trained at Cape Town University in opera under the man on whom Pietro’s character is based! The sound quality was superb and held its clarity even at accelerated listening speeds. I highly recommend experiencing this book as an audiobook in order to be fully immersed in the story.

#WarSerenade

Audience: adult

Trigger warnings: torture, death, suicide, domestic violence, attempted rape, sexual content

Recommended for fans of: World War II fiction, historical fiction, historical romance

Publisher's Synopsis:

When bon vivant Italian opera star turned pilot Pietro is shot down during WWII, he nearly loses his life. Worse, he's lost his passion for music and is close to losing his sanity in a soul-crushing prisoner-of-war camp in South Africa when he meets Iris. He has a vision of love worth dying for - worth living for - and realizes he must find his voice if he ever hopes to find her again.

Iris' dreams are at stake when she meets Pietro, her enemy. All she wants is for her brother to come home alive from the war and to fulfill her destiny as a costume designer in Hollywood. But this spirited redhead's life turns upside down as her eyes meet Pietro's through the cage of his prison. The world may be at stake, but so is her heart.

Their secretive and daring courtship raises the suspicions of the bully who runs the camp, a scarred and damaged tyrant who once dated Iris. Consummating the couple's almost mystical connection will mean crossing the barbed wire, risking the deadly charge of treason, and confronting their worst fears.

Inspired by a true story, War Serenade is compelling, heart-wrenching, sometimes funny, and always dramatic as it celebrates the endurance of the human spirit, the evolution of rich friendships, and love's triumph against impossible odds.

Source:

Reader's Favorite

©Tsotsi Publications: May 28, 2019

Edition: Audiobook

14 hours 5 minutes

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