Saturday, June 23

Review: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Title: The Nightingale
By: Kristin Hannah
My Copy: Library
The BookWhisperer's Rating: 


In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.


FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye 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 France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.

With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah takes her talented pen to the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime. 



I want to sit down here and write out every emotion I experienced reading The Nightingaleand how I hoped for the good but got the bad.  How I cried endlessly out of sadness and joy.  How I worried about the decisions that were made. How I feared for the life of these characters.  And how I was in awe of the braveness that some presented.  

I really want to tell you everything thought and detail that happened in this book but it would be such a big spoiler of a paragraph that I am just going to say this…don’t wait to read this book!  Two years ago a friend told me that I would love this book and that I needed to read it.  I put it off because while the synopsis was appealing, I wasn’t in the mood. I wish I hadn’t put it off for so long. I loved everything about this book! No wonder it was a best seller. The two main characters Vianne and Isabelle are the weakest and strongest characters written.  The pure sadness will break your heart but the pure joy will mend it back together again.  I feel like I have said too much but not enough.  Just.  Go. Read. It.

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