Oh this book, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, go read it right now. It is that good. It will likely forever stay with you and change you. You will cry, you will laugh. The book is simultaneously hard to read and painful and heartbreaking, yet a story of love and courage and the will to live against all odds and you wont be able to put it down. It brought WW2 into my heart in a new and different way. This story, of these two women, was such a tale of the things women do, often with no fanfare, no medals, no recognition. And more so how they do it even when in the middle of war and unspeakable evil. Ah, it was so good. I just loved it.
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5 stars.
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“We are all fragile Isabelle. It’s the thing we learn in war.”
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“I know now what matters, and it is not what I have lost. It is my memories. Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain.”
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“I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.”
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“Men tell stories. Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over.”
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If you are participating in The 52 Book Club’s 2024 Reading Challenge – I found it worked best with these prompts:Â Palindrome on the cover (Hannah), Lowercase letters on the spine, An omniscient narrator, Hybrid genre, An author “everyone” has read except you, A cover without people on it, Chapter headings have dates, A plot similar to another book, A grieving character, Told in non-chronological order, and A character-driven novel.
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