Review – The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (5/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 593 pages
Publisher:‎ St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: February 3, 2015
ASIN: B00JO8PEN2
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed ebook from Library
Rating: 5/5 stars

“FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this on ebook from the library.

Thoughts: I am a bit burned out on WWII reads, so if I had realized ahead of time that this was a book about WWII, I probably would have picked a different Hannah book to read. However, I really wanted to read a book by Kristin Hannah this year, and this is the one I picked. It ended up being really, excellent. I stayed up way too late reading this and struggled to put it down.

This is the story of two sisters who live in France as the Germans invade France. Isabelle is the younger sister at 18 years old and desperately wants to help fight the Germans. Her older sister Vianne just wants her husband to come back home and her daughter to grow up in peace. Both women face incredible struggles throughout the war. Both are survivors and heroes. It is incredibly intriguing and heart-breaking to see the struggles they go through.

I really enjoyed the contrast between Vianne’s life and Isabelle’s life through the years of WWII. Isabelle is young and hotheaded and determined to join the resistance and fight things head-on. Vianne remembers what WWI did to her parents and her family and just wants to survive and ride things out in order to keep her daughter safe. However, when a German soldier starts to bunk in their house Vianne is put in a very difficult position.

The story is set mostly in the past, but there are brief interludes from the present where we are reading from an old woman’s perspective. This is cleverly done because you are assuming that the old women is either Vianne or Isabelle but you don’t know which until right at the end of the book. This keeps you wondering and guessing throughout the story. The story is also propelled forward by wondering who will survive all the torments that the European people are being put through.

The horrors that both of these women (and all the people around them) faced during WWII is just unthinkable; it makes me so happy that I didn’t have to live through that time in history. The bravery shown in the face of so much fear and pain is amazing as well.

The writing here is easy to read and really pulls you in to the story. The descriptions are very well done and make you feel like you are living this story with the characters. I was very impressed by Hannah’s writing style and plan to pick up future books by her. This is an emotional read and mostly sad, although there are glints of hope throughout. I would recommend if you are interested in looking at WWII from both a French citizen’s and a women’s perspective. It was a perspective I hadn’t read about before and it was intriguing.

My Summary (5/5): Overall I am very happy I read this and plan to read more of Kristin Hannah’s book moving forward. This is an excellent read that shows how the women of WWII suffered and how brave they were. In particular, this shows the perspective in France from the beginning to the end of the war. Although this is a tough read emotionally and very heartbreaking at times, it is beautifully written and very engaging.