The Nightingale

 Book 73 of my 2020 Reading Challenge

read from November 9 - December 20

The Nightingale

by Kristin Hannah

Summary (via Goodreads)

published 2015

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye 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, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, 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.

My Opinion

5 stars

The writing was absorbing.  This absolutely didn't feel like a 550+ page book because the details were exquisite but not too much.

The author did an excellent job of showing how the scale slides as circumstances change regarding choices and the gray area of morality (would you save someone else's child if it meant risking your own?)  Both Isabelle's outspokenness and Vianne's naiveté frustrated and angered me at times but I understood Vianne's position, just keeping your head down and waiting for the pendulum to even out and swing back to the "good", more based on my own personality.

There were sections that absolutely gutted me and my eyes were too blurry with tears to read.  The ending was a little mushy but it was still emotional and I'm willing to overlook an unrealistic set of circumstances in the wrap up for the overall journey of the book.  

Quote from the Book

"If I have learned 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."