The Nightingale: A Novel

Why it's worth it

Kristin Hannah's novel follows two sisters in occupied France — one hiding downed airmen in her village house, the other running escape routes over the mountains. It's the rare book that pulls in people who swear they don't like historical fiction, and it wrecks most of them by the last chapter.

This is the safest pick here for a reader you don't know well. The scenes are short, the stakes are always clear, and the emotional payoff shows up on time. Owner feedback is full of people who normally skip the genre and then finished this one in a weekend. If you're buying a gift, or choosing for a group with wildly different reading habits, that kind of broad appeal beats any prize sticker.

The war here is the one civilians fought. Vianne stays in the village with a German officer billeted in her house and makes a hundred small compromises to keep her daughter fed. Isabelle goes the other way, guiding airmen across the Pyrenees under a code name. Hannah gives you both sisters, and the book is strongest when it refuses to tell you which one was braver.

From our review of 8 historical fiction books, by Genevieve Dubois, Home & Living Expert

What we like

• +This is the safest pick here for a reader you don't know well
• +The war here is the one civilians fought
• +Hannah did the reading
• +The opening is slow, and then it isn't

What to know

• –The prose is functional rather than beautiful
• –The frame story, narrated decades later by an aging woman, telegraphs its twist early