Feb 2

Feb 2 The Nightingale

Best Audiobooks, Audiobooks, Fiction, Five Star Books, Historical Fiction

Score: 5/5 Bookmarks

I have no idea why it took me so long to pick up The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, perhaps because everyone kept telling me I MUST read it, and it felt like a lot of hype and pressure to love it. But I did. Not at first, mind you. The writing was wonderful, but both main characters really annoyed me, to begin with. They made stupid choices and assumptions and I kept wanting to slap some sense into them both. But it was their flaws that made them more human, more real in the end.

I read the book as part of a buddy read, and I’m glad I had friends to talk to along the way, to speculate with and pick apart details. It’s a heavy book, with a lot of devastating events, and I’m not ashamed to say that it made me weep on more than one occasion. But it is also hopeful, and beautiful, and ultimately triumphant.

If you too have put off reading this one I urge you to start now. Right now.

The audiobook is also really beautifully narrated by Polly Stone, and you can find it here, or click the button below for the physical book.

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Synopsis:

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.

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