The Nightingale

Vianne's and Isabelle's journeys were engaging from the beginning. Their opposite personalities brought an intriguing clash to the scenes they shared and spunk to the ones they held on their own.

Most of the plot kept me riveted, and I enjoyed the plethora of tense moments and surprises. The mountain hikes were fascinating and made me wonder if such traverses were based on true events. Such bravery! (Reminds me of the Von Trapp family too.)

For a general market book, the Nightingale was pretty good. I would have enjoyed it more had the sexual content and bad language been scaled back (or removed completely). They added nothing positive to the story for me.

The narration on the audio version was splendid, particularly the emotion and accents.

Fans of All the Light We Cannot See might enjoy this one.

Readers looking for cleaner options might enjoy these WWII stories: Hidden Among the Stars by Melanie Dobson, Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke, and Shadowed by Grace by Cara Putman.

Content: sex (including pre-marital [never stated to be a sin, though there was a faith aspect to this book] and rape), expletives, profanity (English and French; this was quite frequent), crudity, nudity, violence, etc.