The Nightingale

Genre: Historical / Romance

Book Type: Audio

Author: Kristin Hannah

Narrator: Polly Stone

Pages / Length: 608 pages / 17 hours and 19 minutes

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (April 25, 2017) / Macmillan Audio (February 3, 2015)

Book Description: 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 a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

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 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. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.

With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women's war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France―a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

Thoughts: I am not always the biggest historical fiction fan, and then I listened to this book and was blown away. This book so heartbreaking, strong, and beautiful. I loved the strength it showed the women had during the war. While there was also suffering going on, I loved that this gave a deeper picture to the events of the war and how life slowly began to change and how the women and children were affected. In a soul crushing tale, the beauty found within this book, and the act of forgiveness, is beyond nothing I can compare this to.

*** I did the audio version of this book, and it is hands down one of the best books I've listened to. ***

Quotes:

🕊️ If I have learned anything anything in this long life of mine, it is this: In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are. Today's young people want to know everything about everyone. They think talking about a problem will solve it. I come from a quieter generation. We understand the value of forgetting, the lure of reinvention.

🕊️ The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.

🕊️ He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I'd like to be known.

🕊️ "Take him. Save him," Rachel pleaded.

Vianne didn't hesitate. She knew now that no one could be neutral - not anymore - and as afraid as she was of risking Sophie's life, she was suddenly more afraid of letting her daughter grow up in a world where good people did nothing to stop evil, where a good woman could turn her back on a friend in need. She reached for the toddler, took him in her arms.

🕊️ I smile at them, my two boys who should have broken me, but somehow saved me, each in his own way. Because of them, I know now what matters, and it is not what I have lost. It is my memories. Wounds heal. Love lasts.

We remain.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️