TheNightingale by Kristin Hannah

Vianne Mauric does not want to let go. She had everything she could ever want. A quaint little house in a quite French town. Her days consist of tending to her chores and spending the evenings with her husband and young daughter. It's not much, nothing lavish, but it does not need to be after the childhood she has tried to forget. After her mother who died when she was young and father who returns home from the Great War more interested in the bottle than Vianne and her sister Isaablle, this life she has created is pretty good. That's why she is so fearful of letting go. Letting her husband Antone go to the font lines of a war that no one could believe was occurring again.

Isaablle wants desperately to hold onto something. Unlike her sister Vianne, she has never had anything or anyone to care for her. After her mothers death, her fathers disinterest in her, and her sister leaving to create her own life, she has been passed from boarding school to boarding school. But now the war is forcing her to reconnect with her family. Since her father will not have anything to do with her, she has to move in with her sister. Now these two sisters, so completely different, have to navigate the war together as the Germans have occupied France and their quite little house. Both sisters doing what they need to do to survive not only the Germans but each other. Both sisters finding courage in their own forms.

There seems to be a resurgence in novels set in World War II France and this might be tha best of the ones that I read. The Nightingale has received a lot of acclaim and occasionally that can be a bad thing. Bad in the sense that everyone is hoping for that amazing book that will be one of their lifelong favorite's. But sometimes a novel has wide aclaim because it appeals to a wide audience. That's what I think this novel does. Most people that will pick this book up will think it is a "good read". It is an easy novel to quickly loose yourself in. Nothing extraordinarily well written in the book, but neither does the storyline hit any particular lows. A few predictable moments, but also a few twists that catch you offguard. As we head deeper into the summer and your vacation maybe fast approaching The Nightingale is an easy, enjoyable, and attention keeping novel.