Review: Beloved Enemy by Al Lacy

From the back cover:

Jenny's allegiance lay with the Confederate Army. But her heart belonged to the enemy. Faithful to her family and the land of her birth, young Jenny Jordan covers for her father's Confederate spy missions. But as she grows closer to handsome Union soldier Buck Brownell. Jenny finds herself torn between devotion to the South and her feelings for the man she is forbidden to love. Overwhelmed by pressure to assist the South, Jenny agrees to carry critical information over enemy lines. But when she is caught in Buck Brownell's territory, will he follow orders to execute the beautiful spy or find a way to save his Beloved Enemy?

My thoughts:

I will be honest and say that I normally do not read stories that revolve around wars or fighting. Those are typically not my style and I do not enjoy them in that I have found the stories to be biased versus one side over the other and  that tends to take itself away from the story line. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was NOT the case in Beloved Enemy by Al Lacy. Lacy weaves a wonderful story of forbidden love and the fight between love of your family and love of your soul mate. I felt close to the character of Jenny and how she was torn between devotion to her father and to his cause of the Confederacy and to her new love of the Union Soldier Buck. I also felt that I really knew what Buck felt in being a soldier loyal to a cause but faced with having to carry out an execution of his love who according to the union is a traitor.

I thoroughly enjoyed the love story aspect of the story. But what about the war part? I felt that the war story was well-written and exciting. It was exciting to read because it was NOT gory in details that would take away from the story. And Mr. Lacy was not biased toward one side or another; I felt that he gave due to both sides and that the reader really couldn't root for one side over another.

Overall I would definitely recommend this book, even if you think you don't like stories based on historical wars.

Disclaimer: I was provided this book free by the publisher Multnomah Books in exchange for a honest review as part of their Blogging for Books program.