All The Same

To The Western Front With Love by Verity Slaughter-Penney is a powerful YA novel showing the futility of war.

The novel takes place in the years immediately preceding World War I and also from the outbreak of war to December 1914.

We see the build up and the early months from both the British and the German sides as we follow three young men – two British and one Bavarian. Both sides in war have parallel lives – young men brought up in the countryside with a love of animals and no desire to fight. They are medics, believing in saving lives not ending them.

The plotline is cleverly constructed as the reader is committed to the lives and welfare of all three young men. They all have families who love their sons and do not want to lose them.