In Memoriam by Alice Winn

What an absolutely marvelous book! In Memoriam is heartbreaking but beautiful, romantic but full of horror, brutal but poetic. ​It’s a book I will never forget, nor its wonderful characters and their epic love story.

In short, it is set during WWI and follows two young British private school boys, Ellwood and Gaunt, who are best friends and secretly in love at a time when that kind of love wasn’t allowed, and follows them as the navigate the war’s horror and death surrounding them. It’s a haunting, devastating, beautiful and epic tale of friendship, lost hopes and dreams, the brutality of war and of love conquering it all.
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This is Alice Winn’s debut book, which is an amazing accomplishment. The writing style is pure perfection, the research flawless and the storytelling is absolutely brilliant! I can only imagine what kind of masterpieces Alice Winn will write in the future, with this as a debut!

The characters in this book were amazing and so relatable. I immediately rooted for sweet Ellwood and stoic Gaunt and their deep affection for each other. It was completely endearing how they both valued their friendship and how they were both so in love with each other but too afraid to lose their friendship to tell the other. The way Alice Winn showed their different backgrounds in the minor details as well as the major privileged/working class differences in the military was so powerful, as was the way Gaunt struggled with the very idea of being in love with a man, knowing the dangerous consequences for a man with his lesser background. His mixed feelings of love and excitement with anxiety and tension was all too understandable.

I absolutely loved this book and cannot praise it enough! It’s both an important eye-opening story to tell, about the horrors of war, how gay love was forbidden and the injustice embedded in a class society, and as well as a swooning, sweet and emotional love story that took my breath away. Please do yourself a favor and read this book! It will probably break your heart, but you won’t regret it!

Rating:
5 stars

Get your own copy:
Author links
Amazon

​Author info:
Alice Winn