I often find myself saying that “I’m not one for historical fiction”, but every time I read a historical fiction book I end up LOVING it. Such was the case with The Nightingale.

I think my biggest problem is that when I think of historical fiction, I think of war, which means I’m thinking about the senseless fighting and shooting and killing. While this book is set during World War 2, we’re not on the battlefield – we experience the war through the eyes of two sisters – Vianne and Isabelle – who both did extraordinary things during World War 2 to help stop the Nazi’s rise to power.

The book begins in 1995 on the Oregon coast. We meet an unknown woman whose son is helping her move into a nursing home. She had battled cancer before, but it has returned. She is a widow and knows she needs to move into the home because her son can’t be there for her 24/7, but we know it is the last thing she wants to do. When she goes into the attic to retrieve something important to her, her son asks why and it sends her back to France. This is when we meet Vianne, whose mother died when she was a teenager and her father – suffering from the effects of fighting in World War 1 – take her and her much younger sister Isabelle to live with another woman. While there, Vianne meets and falls madly in love with a boy named Antoine. The two fall in love and, after a few miscarriages, manage to start a family. Isabelle – the younger sister – stays in the home, but is quite the rebel and is kicked out of schools repeatedly.

Word comes in that the Nazis are on the move and they are advancing on France, but no one thinks this will actually happen, but when it does, Antoine is whisked off to war and it isn’t long before the Nazis have moved in one Vianne’s town and eventually her home when she is forced to let one of the men live with her and her daughter.

Meanwhile, Isabelle is determined to fight back. She has returned to Paris to live with her father, but he refuses to let her stay with him – it’s too dangerous – so he sends her to Carriveau to live with Vianne, but on her way she meets a man who is part of the resistance and she falls madly in love with him. While Vianne is more reserved and isn’t much of a fighter (at leats not in the beginning) Isabelle can’t help[ herself and she knows if she stays with Vianne and her daughter much longer she’ll end up causing them harm, so she returns to Paris and works with a resistance group to help downed English and American soldiers sneak out of Nazi-inhabited France to safety.

Meanwhile, Vianne is caught up in a dangerous game with the Nazis as she watches her Jewish friends get carted off in buses and trains. Unwilling to do nothing, Vianne rebels in her own quiet way, putting both herself and her daughter at risk.

As the book progresses, we periodically jump forward to 1995 to the woman we meet in the first chapter, and it’s unclear whether she is Vianne, Isabelle or Vianne’s daughter. It’s a beautiful, sweeping novel that had me riveted the entire time. Had I not told myself that I had to read every Reese’s book club pick this year simply to expose myself to books I might not read otherwise, I probably never would have picked up this book. I’m so glad I did.