MPOV: The Nightingale

My rating: 5/5

Goodreads rating: 4.61/5
Published: October 8th, 2015

Author: Kristin Hannah

Genre: Historical fiction, World War 2

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 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.

This was one of the highly rated books I've come across with many rave reviews so much so that I had a very high expectation of it. Once I've received the stack of books from Revitalize Books, I immediately picked Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale to start with. 

Having a very high expectation, it does put a toll on the deliverable of this novel. It started off with the background of 2 sisters, Vianne and Isabelle. Both sisters were eventually left with a caretaker by their father once their mother passed away. Their father has since became more elusive, scarred by the first world war. The sisters grew up drifting apart with Vianne getting married early to Antoine and Isabelle was sent to boarding school. With the Nazi's creeping into France, both sisters found each other again with the same purpose: to save France and humanity.

A book filled with so many details from WW2 that I cannot fathom how these people survived during those torturous years. I felt their pain and sorrow. So much sadness and anguish, lost family and heirloom. I was brought back to a world where we would definitely not want to be at all. I can literally felt the painful torture Isabelle had! How she had lasted until then was truly a miracle as I would have succumbed to it. I know it's fiction but you get what I mean... The mental torture Viane has to endure, goodness, though fragile yet so strong!

This is my first read from Kristin Hannah and I am truly amazed with how well she has written this novel. She even had me crying when the inevitable happened! I was in the train on my way home after work and I was in a chapter towards the end where the plot was expected; yet I started to tear up and had to stop reading then LOL! 

Overall, it was an exceptional read for me though midway through it was a little slow. I was thinking it was slowly going downhill but before I knew it, everything started picking up and then that ending! I had actually thought otherwise by the way it was written. Some may like it, some may not but if you are looking for a war story, do give this novel a try.