Skip to main content

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Good Morning Everyone :)

I hope you're all doing well.

Thank you for joining me (Kirby) for another review here on The Preppy Book Princess.

I'm sure we all know of a book that everyone seems to love. You hear about it from everyone you know, its Goodreads rating is extremely high, and you've heard that it's already been optioned for a movie.

Yet when you go to read it yourself, you're fairly underwhelmed, and can't quite understand what all the hype is about.

Well today I'm here to share a review with you guys of a book exactly like this for me.

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah:




Source: Bought for myself

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Publication Date: October 8th, 2015

Genre: Historical Fiction


Synopsis:



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

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.
 

(synopsis from goodreads)


My Review:

I went into the Nightingale fully expecting to love it. After all, I'd previously read and loved Winter Garden by this author, I usually enjoy historical fiction set during World War Two, and everyone and their mother seems to love this book. However, this one ended up being a disappointment for me, and after forcing myself to muddle through and finish it, I was left wondering why this book is so over hyped in the first place.

A book that speaks about the horrific circumstances individuals had to endure during one of the world's darkest time periods should have had me feeling all the feels towards the characters. Unfortunately, that never became the case for me while reading this, and I honestly never found myself connecting to any of the characters or their various stories. Something about this one just felt so unauthentic, and this hindered my enjoyment and my belief in the story.

The first half of the book is extremely slow paced, and I had to keep forcing myself to read more than one chapter at a time. Thankfully, past the halfway point this does improve somewhat, but it still is not a story that truly held my attention, and instead I was mainly reading it just to try and finish it. 

However, my biggest complaint about this particular title is with the inconsistencies within the story itself. I don't know if this was an editing issue, or what else would have happened, but it started to grate on my nerves after it consistently occurs.

In the opening chapters, the reader is hearing from Vianne's point of view about the first time they were brought to a particular house, and yet a couple of sentences later she talks about the many summers they spent in that particular house beforehand. How is it your first time visiting a house if you've spent almost every summer of your childhood there? Vianne talks about being brought to this house when she's fourteen and her little sister Isabelle is only four. She then goes on and talks about getting pregnant at sixteen, miscarrying at seventeen, and having been unable to be their for her four year old sister in the way she needed. If when Vianne was fourteen, Isabelle was four, it's biologically impossible for Isabelle to still be four when Vianne is seventeen.

I hoped this wasn't going to continue throughout the rest of the story, but unfortunately it does. There's a scene where Isabelle is described as scaling a rose wall during the middle of winter. There's another scene where Isabelle's described as walking through knee deep snow to reach her destination, and then she decides to steal a bike, and is worried about someone seeing her having done so. However, no thought is given to the fact that is would be pretty much impossible to ride a bike in knee deep snow, and the fact that if she managed to accomplish this task, there would most definitely be tracks in the snow that she never does anything to cover up.

After the reader gets through the bulk of the novel, they are then treated to an over emotional ending that I'm sure is probably part of the reason why so many other readers felt such a connection to this story. However, it failed to awaken anything in me, and instead I saw it as a last failed attempt to connect the reader to a story that really wasn't that well put together.

Unfortunately for me, this one gets a pass, and I will not be recommending it.

Final Rating: ⭐⭐

It did not live up to the hype, and their are tons of better World War Two historical fiction books out there!


Thanks so much for reading guys! Have a great rest of your day :)

This is not a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The photo was taken by me, and belongs to me.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

First Line Friday: Carolina Breeze

Happy Friday Everyone :) I hope you're all having a great week! Mine has actually been pretty good. We've had some really nice days, and my husband and I were finally able to put our garden in, and various flowers and the like. We've also had a couple of lovely, rainy days as well, and I love how green everything is looking in our yard right now. For today's post, I'm excited to once again be linking up with the lovely Hoarding Books  for another edition of First Line Friday. This fun weekly meme simply consists of sharing the first line of the book you're currently reading. For this week's first line, I'm going to be sharing from Denise Hunter's recently released title that I ended up absolutely loving. Carolina Breeze by Denise Hunter: About The Book: A jilted bride. A struggling innkeeper. And a romantic mountain getaway that changes everything. Rising Hollywood star Mia Emerson is looking for a safe place to land in the wake of a public breakup a

First Line Friday: Just As I Am

Happy Friday Everyone :) I hope you're all having a great week, and looking forward to the weekend. Since it is Friday, it's time once again for First Line Friday, which is hosted over at Hoarding Books. For today's first line, I'm going to be featuring a recent debut novel that I had the opportunity to read and review. About The Book: Adeline Rhodes has spent years locked away in a New Orleans apartment controlled by her criminal boyfriend. After a daring escape, she realizes just how far she has grown from the things in which she once believed. Declan King has lived a life of solitude and duty for the U.S. Army. When the deaths of his grandparents bring him home to his family farm, he is forced into contact with people who know too much about his past to simply leave him alone. When Adeline’s past catches up to her, the two strangers find themselves thrust into a fake relationship to protect Adeline from her vengeful ex. As their chance meeting begin

First Line Friday: Courting Mr. Emerson

Happy Friday Everyone :) Since it is Friday, I'll once again be participating in First Line Friday which is hosted by Hoarding Books .  For this week, I'm going to be sharing the first line from Melody Carlson's newest book, Courting Mr. Emerson. About The Book: When the fun-loving and spontaneous artist Willow West meets buttoned-up, retired English teacher George Emerson, it's not exactly love at first sight. Though she does find the obsessive-compulsive man intriguing. Making it her mission to get him to loosen up and embrace life, she embarks on what seems like a lost cause--and finds herself falling for him in the process. A confirmed bachelor, George vacillates between irritation and attraction whenever Willow is around--which to him seems like all too often. He's not interested in expanding his horizons or making new friends; it just hurts too much when you lose them. But as the summer progresses, George feels his defenses crumbling. The quest