I loved this book. It is Hannah at her best. If you read Winter Garden you will love this one as well. I found myself wanting to go back to the characters lives long after I had finished the book. If you enjoy stories from the war and all the struggles that entailed...the bravery of the innocent. you will enjoy this book!

Do not be put off by the “women’s fiction” classification of this book. THE NIGHTINGALE is a well- researched, well written discussion of the realities, cruelties and decisions that face an ordinary family in Vichy France. The book, beginning in 1938 as war approaches, is told from the viewpoint of the surviving sister many years later. The family, father and two sisters, is torn apart by their individual decisions when one sister and her children are forced to house a German officer in the family home in a small village after her husband joins the Allied Forces. The father, remaining in Paris, attempts to continue the family’s bookstore, while the second daughter chooses to join the resistance.
Village life under occupation and the dangers of resistance are clearly shown. The characters and situations are well developed and realistic. The supporting characters are shown to be humans acting under extreme duress – the good are not always good and the bad are not always bad.
I would have preferred to learn more about Rachel and her plight after she is forced from her job early in the occupation. We never quite learn how she is able to survive and seemingly thrive with no money and no way to get any.
Book groups will have a plethora of topics to discuss, including what decisions they would make concerning “outing” Jews, lying to friends and family, fraternizing with the enemy, murder, resistance, and many others.
5 of 5 stars

There are so many books written about the Holocaust that I am somewhat burned out on them. But every now and then a new one comes out that just is not like all the rest. This holds true to "The Nightingale" by Kristin Hannah. Ms. Hannah has the gift of articulating the complexities of families and relationships. The reader can feel the struggles the characters are encountering – the pain of emotions felt and beatings taken, the fear of being found out and of losing the ones you love most in the world, the agonizing hunger felt each day. You are right there standing next to the characters; you are pulled into and become a part of the story. I thought she couldn't get any better than her book "Home Front", but this one is just as good, if not better

In "The Nightingale" the sisters Viann and Isabelle live in the "Free Zone" in France. But this Free Zone soon becomes Nazi-occupied. It is difficult to read of the burdens the French people had to deal with each day for several years. People did what they had to do to survive. Some people were brave enough and humane enough to make attempts to save the Jews. Others, in self-survival mode, looked the other way. Others sadly joined the Nazis in their atrocities. The story here is very real. It reminded me of the book "A Woman in Berlin" about what the women had to do to survive, and they guilt and self-loathing they felt afterwards. One statement in "The Nightingale' really hit me – "Men tell stories…Women get on with it…We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over."

The characters are very human with their strengths and their weaknesses. I loved them, I hated them, I feared for them, I rejoiced with them. Now the book is over but the characters live on in my mind.

This was the first book by Kristen Hannah that I have read and now I want to go back and read her earlier books. The plot was engaging and the twists were good and yet believable.The characters were well drawn and engaging. I enthusiastically recommend this book

I love to read historical fiction and get totally absorbed in the characters and times. The Nightingale is an engrossing, well developed account of two sisters in WWII occupied France. One of the BEST reads I have had lately. Never a dull moment!!!

Kristin Hannah transports the reader into the scenes of the small villages of occupied France in such a way that you relate to the main characters of her novel, The Nightingale. Whether or not it is a true story, it's filled with enough real relationships and tragedies that the heroic story of the Nightingale is a heartfelt view into the life of fear and hiding that was WWII France. The characters were very realistic and relatable and the plot was very compelling. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

This is an excellent rendering of the dire circumstances innocent people had to tolerate during the German occupation of France in WWII. It is hard to fathom the interminable suffering that took place under the Nazi regime. Two sisters come face to face with the horror of war, and both find ways to make a difference.

Wonderfully told story, totally engaging, and the saddest part is that even if it is a novel, we know too well the awful truth of what happened, and that the author has embedded that truth in this novel.

I found myself thinking of these characters even when I was not reading the book. The story of the Germans occupying France during World War II has been told many times, but Kristin Hannah painted a vivid picture of the characters and the times. I easily pictured the countryside in the Loire Valley and the city of Paris.

Sisters Viann and Isabella, who seemed very different, bonded in the dire circumstances. Morals during war become a matter of necessity.

A beautifully told story.