A review by bekreads_
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

4.0

I have a lot of thoughts on this book and my opinion on it changed quite a few times through reading. I will also say that I’ve read quite a lot of WW2 fiction and non fiction and can’t help but compare this to other titles in similar settings, the main being All the Light We Cannot See which is also set in WW2 France.

To me there were a few main niggles with this book. Firstly, it felt like there was a lot of themes trying to be packed in at once. It felt like every tragic part of WW2 was put onto the 2 female leads which felt unrealistic and left some parts feeling like afterthoughts that only became mentioned toward the end of the book.

There were also glaring inconsistencies between things written within the same paragraph. For example, one scene depicts a character walking slowly through knee deep snow, and then the next second she’s apparently racing through town on a bicycle. Like the author forgot about the snow. This happened a few times.

The positives: the ending was wonderful and I felt wrapped things up nicely. Isabelle’s character specifically had wonderful development and motives which were tied off so nicely at the end.

Overall, the themes in this book would usually make me feel a lot more emotionally. It seems to be just me based on the reviews, but there was something missing in this for me to make it a 5 star read.