Kristin Hannah's Novel "The Nightingale" - A Story of Love, Loss and Survival during WWII

Ashley Nix: I absolutely loved this book! I am in a reading club and this was picked for one of our books. I'm usually a thriller type of girl but this book was absolutely amazing! My favorite book of the year!

United States on Oct 03, 2023

jabt: The author crammed everything possible into this book - German occupied France, rape, torture, executions, concentration camps, love, death and everything in between. It was the story of two very different sisters who both ended up as heroines in their own way. The author never used one word when she could use ten so the book could have been a lot shorter. I would recommend this book as a good holiday read.

United Kingdom on Sep 27, 2023

Kindle Customer: Unstoppable.....what a beautiful depiction of love and loss with such great depth in characters....thoroughly enjoyed it....it was like the characters were alive and right in front of you...

India on Sep 25, 2023

carolyn M. Ives: A story that touches your heart and every emotion one can feel. Love, hate, anger, despair, suffering,survival and more. To say that this novel touched me cannot even come close to describing it. I know it is fiction but I also know there is so much truth in the war years and the horror that happened. Thank you Kristin Hannah for helping people remember what war is.

United States on Sep 22, 2023

Amazon Customer: This book made me cry out with excitement and brought me to tears. It made me laugh and say things out loud as if I was there.. I couldnt put it down. It was exciting, riveting and it pulled me in from the first few pages. I loved her attention to every detail making me feel like I was there feeling what the characters felt seeing what they saw. Best book I've read in a very long time
Five stars!!!!!

United States on Sep 11, 2023

Juan C. Velandia: This book tells the story of Vianne and Isabelle, two French sisters who must survive the Second War and we meet them just when Germany invades their homeland and it surrenders, while De Gaulle invites his countrymen and wen not to let themselves be defeated by the Nazis. Although it seems that the story is going to the common places of the historical novel, the twist that this book has makes it impossible to put down: Vianne and Isabelle are forced to receive a German soldier in their house, Captain Wolfgang Beck. This generates an argument between the women: one is the traditional one and the other is the rebel; one remembers the first war, the other is an idealistic young woman willing to fight.

The sisters separate (spoiler?) and we continue the life of the house with the mastery with which the author involves us in their lives, making us suffer with the sadness and get excited with the small triumphs of the characters. Surviving the Second War was not easy for anyone, but women, especially, played a very important role in the development of the conflict. They stopped being seen as "simple" housewives or for reproduction purposes only, and became brave, spies, tireless...

United States on Sep 08, 2023

Kindle-klant: I usually skip books with this heavy topic, but I am happy I gave it a chance. It's a beautiful, well written book that honestly displays what life during WWII was like.

Netherlands on Sep 05, 2023

Anuradha GuptaAnuradha Gupta: ***MILD SPOILERS AHEAD***

Let me share a fact today, I am attracted to tragedy and I found this out recently. I can not get over war-based historical fiction. I tried, but eventually, between other books of different genres, this genre keeps coming back to me, and I am helpless at stopping it. The tragedy in them excites me and the hope in them soothes my nerves.
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah is a tale of love and hate, bravery and fear, victory and loss, and much more, stories that are woven by the women of Occupied France.

Vianne and Isabelle Rossignol had never been the sisters their mother had wanted them to be. In fact, they were more away than together. Ever since their beloved mother had died, they had been on their own. Facing abandonment from their Great War veteran father, they found themselves coping with their grief all alone. Neither could comfort the other in their time of shared misery. How could they? A 4-year-old and a 14-year-old hardly have anything in common. When each knew they had nobody but themselves, they looked for whatever could give them comfort and the love that had suddenly disappeared from their lives. While Vianne found herself...

India on Mar 14, 2021

Thierry Laffin: CAREFUL : some spoiling points

SUBJECT : A huge thanks … and some historical corrections

Dear Kristin,

I thank you very much for your nice novel “Nightingale”.

I am French, born in 1962, seventeen years after the Nazi defeat. 17 years… an eternity for my children. Hard to imagine now ; it’s no more than the span of time since the 11th of September.
My father, born in 1910, had precise memories of the Great War and was called for duty for the second one. He told me a lot about these times and we have some “Justes” (Righteous among the Nations) in our family.
In light of the above, I spotted out some passages of your novel that you might want to adjust for a later edition. Some are details of no importance, others are …
Thanks again for your very nice work. I hope you won’t feel offended by my suggestions. My sources are at your disposal if needed.
Best regards,
Thierry Laffin
1) Page 23 of the St Martin edition. A tiny detail to begin with. Antoine Mauriac is called by mobilization order, goes to the train station, and buys “their tickets..(…) and led them to the train… third class”. It’s not clear if it’s...

France on Oct 02, 2017

JBenoit: ‘In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.’

Wow… what a completely epic and powerful story this book was! This is a book that is subtle in its brilliance, it’s one of those books that gets even better the more you sit and think about it. I’m still kind of in awe as I sit here and reflect back on the sheer magnitude of everything that happened over the course of this book. This isn’t the type of book I typically read but I’ve heard so many people talking about it and with nearly 14,000 5-star reviews, how could I not check it out? I’m very glad I did because it was such a moving experience and it really makes you reflect on your own life and certainly will make you thankful for the freedoms we enjoy each day. It wasn’t over the top or gratuitous but it was a very real and honest portrait of life for women in France during WWII and the journey of two sisters as they set out on two very different paths towards survival and freedom in this horrific era.

The story centers around two sisters, Vianne Mauriac and Isabelle Rossingol. Vianne, the older and more responsible of the two is living a peaceful and happy life with her...

United States on Dec 14, 2015