A review by scrambledmegwithcheese
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

2.0

This was like a 2.5 star read but I’m rounding down in fairness to the Other Boleyn Girl and Intermezzo (my latest 3 stars).

The story was compelling but lacked substance for the period and the topics it managed, including sister and parent relationships, loss, and especially the Holocaust. It had a lot of promise & I just felt like it could’ve been much more than it was.

I did appreciate the “second quarter” of the book where France was in confusion shortly after the German occupation & we saw the complex and different decisionmaking of Isabelle, Viann, and Rachel. I thought the pacing of the book was managed very well though the writing often lacked substance & was in many cases cheesey and trite.