5 stars

A murder. A tragic accident….
Someone is dead.
But who did what?

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WOAHHHH!!!! This book was freaking amazing!!! It was a genre change for me — it’s women’s fiction and mystery, not romance — but I was just in the kind of mood where I was craving something totally different than what I usually read…. so I tried this one! And I was BEYOND impressed with it.

Like holy WOW impressed.

The writing was fantastic — starkly honest, detailed, introspective, observant, multi-sided… the story kept me guessing right up until the end. There were these twists that totally shocked me (I mean like jaw-drop omgdidnotseethatcoming shocked) and I just had these chiiiiiiills run through me at some of the reveals.

This author really just “gets” people and interactions on a very deep level in a way I’ve seldom seen before. Gah. It was powerful. I mean really. Holy woman power!!! I loved the writing, I loved story, and can honestly say that it had one of the single most satisfying endings ever.

So… what’s it about?

It has a large cast of characters, but focuses mostly on three women’s lives. They all have children entering Kindergarten in the same year. Their lives are vastly different but closely connected in ways that even they don’t realize at first. And there’s a murder. Someone dies at a trivia night. But you don’t know who. And you don’t know who killed them. No clue! Part of the whole mystery is figuring this out, and it’s done in such a cool way — an fascinating mix between the story of the weeks counting down to that night mixed in with snippets of interviews being given after that night of people describing what happened.

I’m not going to say a word more but I will assure you that the ending delivers on every level!

This whole book really highlights how the same event can be seen in so many ways, from so many different perspectives, and from each of those sides, it can appear vastly different. You never really know what someone else is thinking or going through, what they’re capable of, what secrets they’re keeping…

Gah. Fascinating!!!

Just so you know, this is not a dark read at all. It’s very serious at times, very light at others. But it’s also not dark and it’s not scary. A few people were asking me so I thought I’d clarify that.

Actually I saw someone describe it as a “juicy drama” and I think that’s the perfect description!

It’s just the kind of story that raises a million questions in your mind. It makes you THINK, keeps you wondering, theorizing, questioning everything. It’s detailed and engaging. Can you tell I loved it?

There are some very serious themes — domestic violence, single parenthood, motherhood in general, bullying, murder, secrets, and more. It’s almost scarily accurate in many of it’s depictions.

Hehe this was my status update from 91%:

GAAAASPPPPPPPPP — did NOT see that coming!!!! Holy SHITTTTT!!
CHILLS. O_O
HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT. 
I mean WOAH. WOAH. WOAHHHHHH. 

This author is just so skilled. The plot was cleverly woven and it just delivered all the right details at all the right times. In fact, I think I actually have all of a certain chapter highlighted. ALL of it.

It was an incredible reading experience. I totally get why they’re making it into a movie (with Reese Witherspoon & Nicole Kidman) because I could literally picture it in my mind as I was reading.

I have a ton of quotes highlighted in my book, but in case you’re wondering why I don’t have them included in this review, it’s because in retrospect, I realized that given this type of story, they might not make sense out of context. So I’m just going to let you read the book for yourself and read them that way!

I’ve also read another book by this author, The Husband’s Secret (My review), and even though I thought that one was really good, I actually loved this one more because I was much happier with this ending. This one left me with such a strongly good feeling while The Husband’s Secret left me feeling a little… unsettled (like the emotional price paid was too great)… but this one was just WOW.

I highly recommend it!

Rating: 5 STARS!! Standalone women’s fiction/mystery (not romance).

• Buy BIG LITTLE LIES (Kindle)
• Buy BIG LITTLE LIES (Hardcover)

In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

• Buy THE NIGHTINGALE (Kindle)
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HOLY WOW!!! This book was absolutely epic! A sweeping, breathtaking journey that captivated me from the first page with the strength and beauty of the writing. Truly an unforgettable story!

The Nightingale has a 4.8/5 rating average on Amazon (which is HUGE!!) and what that basically means is that  practically everyone who is reading it is loving it. And I’m now adding my own 5 STAR rating to that list because this book owned my heart. The ending was so powerful that I read the last 10 pages with tears pouring down my face and days after finishing my read, I still can’t stop thinking about it.

I will say upfront though that this book was a little different than the kinds I usually read and review though because it wasn’t solely focused on a love story, even though there were two love stories within it.

While men endure great hardship during war, it affects everyone. This is the often-unspoken story of women’s war. Mothers, daughter, sisters, wives… this is the story of their strength, endurance, sacrifice, and courage during the darkest part of their lives. So many of them didn’t just wait for their men to return but took many grave risks to save as many other lives as they could.

We begin the story in 1995 with an old woman towards the end of her life, moving out of her house into a retirement home. Without much of a future ahead of her, she begins to look backward at her past, taking us with her through her life story beginning in France 1939, right before the war changed her peaceful life.

The flash back segments of the book are largely focused on two sisters: the older Vianne, the rule follower, and the younger Isabelle, the rebel. Vianne’s idealic life in the countryside with her husband, Antoine, who she’d been in love with since she was fourteen and their young daughter, Sophie, was changed when he was to be mobilized and called to duty to fight in WW2. The postman became a soldier overnight, and the man she loved was sent to the front, leaving her behind not knowing what the future would bring.

He stood up slowly and took her in his arms. She wanted to bottle how safe she felt in this moment, so she could drink of it later when loneliness and fear left her parched…

“I love you,” he said against her lips.

“I love you, too,” she said but the words that always seemed so big felt small now. What was love when put up against war.

Months into her husband’s deployment, with no word still from him and with their already-dire situation getting worse and worse after France surrendered to Germany, Vianne and Sophie’s lives are once again changed when a young German officer requisitions their home, making it his own. Faced with one hardship after another, they both do everything they can to survive, and pray for Antoine’s safe return.

“You needn’t worry, Madame,” he said. “We have been admonished to act as gentlemen. My mother would demand the same, and, in truth, she scares me more than my general.” It was such an ordinary remark that Vianne was taken aback.

She had no idea how to respond to this stranger who dressed like the enemy and looked like a young man she might have met at church…

He remained where he was, a respectful distance from her. “I apologize for any inconvenience, Madame.”

“My husband will be home soon.”

“We all hope to be home soon.”

Miles away, Vianne’s younger sister Isabelle attends a sort of finishing school for French woman and hates every single moment of it. Her outspoken and rebellious nature unwilling to bow to their rules. When the war comes though, she makes her way through the wilderness to Paris.

Her beloved city was like a once-beautiful courtesan grown old and thin, weary, abandoned by her lovers. In less than a year, this magnificent city had been stripped of its essence by the endless clatter of German jackboots on the streets and disfigured by swastikas that flew from every monument.

Refusing to accept France’s surrender, and despite her sister’s pleading to stay quiet and safe, she follows her heart and meets a young man named Gaetan. She falls in love with him and his belief that the French can fight the Nazis from within France. But when things take an unexpected turn, she decides to take matters into her own hands, regardless of what anyone tells her she can’t do, and joins an underground group, The Resistance, that risks their lives to make a difference and help save as many others as they can.

On this cool October morning, her life would change. From the morning she boarded this train… she would no longer be the girl in the bookshop… 

From now on, she was Juliette Gervaise, code name the Nightingale.

You know that feeling when a book is so absorbing that you just want to cancel all your plans so you can keep reading it… and even when you can’t read it, you’re thinking about it? Yeah, that was me with this book! Once I started reading, I could barely put it down until I’d reached the last page.

As the past and present storylines began to entwine, these shivers ran down me as certain reveals were brought into the light. Real shivers. Tears would spring to my eyes with even the simplest of things — but ones that had such a hugely powerful impact on the story. A letter from Paris. BOOM. Tears.

“Please… Just stay strong and be there for me when the time comes for me to leave this cage… Because of you, I can survive. I hope that you can find strength in me, too, V. That because of me, you will find a way to be strong. 

Hold my daughter tightly tonight, and tell her that somewhere far away, her papa is thinking of her. And tell her I will return.

I love you.”

This book is honest in portraying the events that occurred to these characters, but not overly graphic. It doesn’t need to be. The things that happen, and they way they are told are so powerful that you FEEL them. There are some scenes though that are hard to read because they are quite painful and I’ll warn that there may be triggers for some people, but then again, this is a story that takes place during a brutal war. There’s everything you can expect from such a story — brutal firefights, prison camps, beatings, near starvation, sacrifice… but there is also hope, resilience, survival. As I neared the end of the book, during the last few pages, tears began to pour down my face. It was achingly beautiful.

Many of you will be wondering if there is a happy ending. I don’t want to give things away, but I want you to know that I was completely okay with this ending. It’s naturally not all sunshine and roses, how can it be with such a setting? But my gut feeling tells me that even hard-core romance fans will still love this book. I was moved to tears several times, but in many ways my heart was healed.

“I love you, Antoine Mauriac, and I expect you to come home to me.”

Kristin Hannah’s  writing is some of the best I’ve ever read. It’s extraordinarily vivid and evocative. This was my first book by her and I felt like I was right there with these characters — not only were their emotions so strongly conveyed, but the picture of their surroundings came to life before my eyes.

I have searched for years without luck for a book that could even come close to comparing to my all-time favorite book, The Bronze Horseman (read more). This book however, is the closest I’ve ever come to one that captured a similar feeling. The story is vastly different — while The Bronze Horseman completely revolved around one love story that was the driving force behind the entire trilogy, The Nightingale was focused on two sisters and their experiences surviving the war — while the sisters each had their own love stories, it was their personal journeys that this book was focused on. I also found TBH to generally be more emotional than TN. So, it’s not of course a direct parallel. But I will say that if you’re a fan of TBH and if, like me, you’ve been searching for years for a similar book, then you absolutely must read this.

This was honestly one of the most powerful stories I’ve read. It will stay in my heart, I know this for a fact. More than anything, what I take away from it is gratitude… gratitude for every single freedom and luxury that I know so many of us naturally take for granted. They are precious. This book reminded me of that.

Rating: 5 STARS!! Standalone novel.

• Buy THE NIGHTINGALE (Kindle)
• Buy THE NIGHTINGALE (Hardcover)

_______________________________________________

SPOILER ALERT: For those of you who want to know who lives and who dies…

“I could tell her how I know her. Make her realize why I have this overwhelming urge to protect her. But some secrets I’ll take to my grave, and this is definitely one of them.”

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• Buy CONFESS (TB Show Tie-In Paperback)

Exquisitely heart-wrenching and absolutely unputdownable, Confess is another unique Colleen Hoover masterpiece and one of the must-read books of this year!!

From the moment I read the blurb, I was intrigued by the story! And once I started reading, I discovered that there’s even more to this story than meets the eye. There’s an added layer to it that I absolutely loved but that I won’t mention because discovering it as you read is honestly best. This review is spoiler free.

I can honestly say that this was the first time ever that a book made me completely break down crying (like real tears-pouring-down-my-face tears) in the very first chapter. The pain and loss and love were so achingly profound that I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the emotions.

“How can a fifteen year-old-girl defend her love when that love is dismissed by everyone?”

But, true to Colleen Hoover’s amazing ability to make you feel a range of nearly every single human emotion possible, just a few pages later, I was laughing right out loud.

The story is about a heroine named Auburn who, by the age of 21, had already lost the most important thing in her life and was now just struggling to make ends meet. Faced with an impossible situation, she was desperate for any income she could get. When she came across a curious building, quite literally covered in scraps of paper with people’s deepest, darkest confessions written on it, she had no idea what she’d find inside. She certainly wasn’t expecting to find a quirky, ridiculously handsome, and very talented artist who practically begged her to work for him.

What she didn’t know was that he was keeping a secret. He remembered her… knew her from before but couldn’t tell her how. So the balance of their dynamic was very interesting as they both fell for each other while each respectively keeping back huge personal secrets that could change their lives…

“They are the past and this is the present, and Auburn is… somehow both. She would be shocked if she knew how much of her past has affected my present, which is why I won’t be sharing the truth with her. Some secrets should never turn into confessions.”

I read this book as slowly as I could to prolong the experience. The story was completely unpredictable. Most books give you a vague idea of the direction they’re heading in but not Confess. I read each page with no idea what would happen next and I honestly loved that about it. I have such complete trust in Colleen Hoover’s writing that I never once doubted that she would take the story exactly wherever it needed to go. So I just sat back and enjoyed the ride!

“I’m losing track of the lies I’m telling her, and lying to someone like her isn’t normally something I would do. But I don’t know how to tell her the truth…

I’ve never felt stronger than I feel when I’m with her. I’ve never felt like I had a purpose like I feel when I’m with her. I think about the first words I said to her when she showed up at my door. “Are you here to save me?”

True to CoHo style, Confess is completely different than anything else she’s written. And, like I mentioned, there’s an addition to the plot that added in just the perfect measure of heart-warming depth and heart-wrenching angst to the story. I loved the way it was introduced. It all felt so incredibly real.

One of the things I love most about Colleen Hoover’s writing is how deeply she makes me care for her characters and how strongly she makes me feel for them. The opening chapter of this book (the one that had me break down crying) was the perfect representation of that because if she could make me feel that much for new characters in just a matter of pages, just imagine what she can do with an entire book.

While this book is certainly sexy, it’s not overly steamy. However the circumstances of these characters’ lives forced them to grow up fast, and this felt like a very mature book. The emotions and pure, raw intensity poured into even just a single kiss took my breath away over and over again.

“The more we kiss, the more we realize what we’re losing…He pulls back and looks me in the eyes with a pained expression. He moves his hand from the back of my head and brings it to my cheek, brushing a thumb over my bottom lip. “This already hurts.”

All in all, reading Confess was a truly magical reading experience. Because of all the layers in this story, there were actually three completely separate but intricately entwined storylines happening. I know that might sound a bit contradictory but it’ll make perfect sense as soon as you read it. I promise. I felt fully and equally invested in all of them and couldn’t wait to see how they’d all come together.

This book is most certainly a romance, but it’s also so much more. It’s a story of survival, courage, unexpected chances, fate, sacrifice, confessions, lies, love, and healing. It’s deeply emotional and very fast paced. I flew through the pages and was unable to put it down.

When he feels my tears falling against his chest, he doesn’t do anything to stop them. Instead, he simply holds me with a much tighter grip and presses his cheek against the top of my head…”I know, baby,” he whispers. “I know.”

If you follow my blog, you’ll know I’m a huge Colleen Hoover fan. I’ve loved everything she’s ever written most especially because of the uniqueness of her stories and her ability to make me care so much for her characters. I feel like if she wanted to write a detailed account of the paint drying on her walls, I’d read it in a heartbeat. And I bet you she’d end up making me emotionally attached to that wall too!

Ooooh!! AND. This book has real artwork incorporated into it that was commissioned especially for Confess. As you read, you’ll see these pieces inserted in the story in relevant places. In my advance copy, they weren’t there yet but I read the descriptions of these paintings and I cannot wait to see them!

Guys, this book was truly fantastic. Highly recommended!

Rating: 5 stars! Standalone contemporary romance.

• Buy CONFESS (Kindle)
• Buy CONFESS (Paperback)
• Buy CONFESS (TV Show Tie-In Paperback)