Reviewed by Thomas A. Peters for Readers' Favorite

In a story set in a small village near Moscow in 1941, as German troops invade Russia, young Serafima declares her love for Victor, a Soviet Officer, but denies him physically before he is sent to the front to fight. When the German army occupies the village, and two soldiers are billeted in their home, Serafima and her mother are reduced to the humiliation of serving the enemy and sleeping in the barn. Werter, a young German lieutenant and talented musician, shows some kindness to Serafima, but conditions are altogether deplorable as much of the village is burned to the ground before the occupiers are forced to retreat. Other atrocities occur, and Serafima finds herself pregnant with a child whom she first hates until an epiphany awakens her maternal instincts. Bearing the hope that the love earlier declared between them can overcome the impossibility of Victor being the father of the child, Serafima looks to the war’s end as a possible new beginning for herself and her son. However, Victor’s return fails as a romantic dénouement when his career clashes with his feelings for his former paramour. After a period of growth as a woman and a mother, Serafima finds true love again with an intellectual who can help her to forget the past, only to have her newfound happiness threatened by the twisted passion that has smoldered within Victor for years.

Marina Osipova’s The Cruel Romance is an entrancing novel of historical fiction that successfully fuses romance and war-time drama with an honest study of the psyches of four very different personalities. Within the artistically constructed narrative, the author has achieved something special in so spectacularly conveying the inner neuroses of her characters, despite telling the story from the third-person perspective. Additionally, Osipova demonstrates extraordinary skill in her development of characters who, at the outset, though old enough to go to war, begin as little more than children who must face the harsh realities of a dangerous world inherited from their parents. Through the novel they then grow into the adults who can, for better or worse, change the world themselves. Osipova easily draws the reader into the setting with vivid imagery, and readily injects the story with the dynamics of the socio-political system that infected both countries for much of the twentieth century. A well-researched, highly-detailed novel, The Cruel Romance will keep lovers of serious historical fiction spellbound throughout.