Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - The Nightingale

The writing is quite stunning. The prose is beautiful, weighted, and eloquent. There were some truly stunning standalone lines, but it also had a nice cohesion. Beyond that, it wasn’t a challenging writing style to read and was well-woven into the plot.

Characters: 4.5⭐️/5

The characters were highly motivated and flawed, which meant that they felt uniquely human to me. The characterization of the Nazi soldiers was particularly detailed and complicated, leading to moments of pathos for these villains. At times, it felt like certain characters made very weird choices, but it was usually justified later. This just led to a slower understanding of characterization than I might have liked, but it wasn’t too jarring.

Plot: 4⭐️/5

I know that this is kind of a fan-favourite book, so I’m reluctant to say this, but at times it felt like the author used trauma a bit reflexively to address human moments. Too many times did I know that a terrible scene was coming and, when it came, it was witnessed by one too many characters who we had grown to love, no matter how illogical it might be that they would have ended up witnessing it. I appreciate that this is dealing with the reality of war horrors that took place during WWII; however, at times, it just felt a bit too neat in how directly the trauma continuously happened. That being said, the overarching plot was really well done. I loved the story-within-a-story format that the grandmother at the beginning set up. Overall a solid plot with just a lot of trauma at the end.

Post-Reading Rating: 4⭐️/5

The ending felt fine: necessary and complete.

Who Should Read This?

Fans of WWII novels
Fans of historical fiction
Fans of Kristin Hannah
Fans of real-life trauma books or books focusing on horrific moments

Final Rating: 4⭐️/5

Content Warnings

tojtwl's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative inspiring sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

So beautiful, but so sad. I've read so many raving reviews about books by Kristin Hannah. I'm glad I gave it a try.

Content Warnings

slama_llama's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Coming from a totally different part of the world, our history books do not cover WW2 in much detail other than highlighted names and dates and a few important accounts. This book is a historical fiction and not reality, it helped me peek at the horror that war is (yes, I understand that this is the water down, digestible, slightly romanticised version of the reality). I realised that there are so many ways that war affects people’s regular, everyday lives. So many ways it affects children- the intensity and the subtler effects never occurred to me.
And this is not a thing of the past. There countries that are still at war, and things much worse than what is described here is happening to them, right now. Even with the resources we have, they are not receiving the aids they deserve.
It might not be completely related to the content of this book, but I was reminded so many times how important it is that we keep remembering the past, our mistakes and it’s horrors, so we can manage our present in a way that we don’t have to relive it.
This book was peppered with references to incidents and places I’ve never heard of and wish to learn a little more about.
I appreciate the book and it’s writing. The last few chapters felt a bit cliche, but I liked the neat way the book ended.

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