Not my favorite WWII novel. 
 Maybe over the years I've become a bit of a WWII book snob, but this just didn't seem as well researched and "real" as some other books written about the same the same time period. When reading about such a tragic, shocking, and transformative time in our world history, whether it's fiction or non fiction, I hope to feel some sort of impact, which many WWII stories have done for me (The Book Thief, All the Light We Cannot See, Code Name Verity, Unbroken...I could go on). The Nightingale, not so much. 
 I first started rolling my eyes when Isabelle fell in love with some (possibly dangerous) guy from the Resistance all in the span of like a day. I know this is wartime, but come on. Isabelle was your cliche rebellious teenager who stands up to authority (though her actions vs. the Nazis were very admirable at least). Then there's her sister Vianne, who has to hold down the fort while her husband is off at war and has pretty much no backbone to speak of. I can't imagine having to raise a child alone while your husband is gone and a German soldier is billeting in your house, but Vianne was hard to like until towards the end. 
 Basically, this book is about two sisters that I sometimes liked, but most of the time didn't. And I felt the setting to be poorly created - the winter scenes were repetitive and by the fifth time I read about Vianne lining her clothes with newsprint I was thinking "okay, we get it already." This wasn't a complete fail - there were wrenching moments, and I didn't mind the ending, but this kind of felt like WWII fiction for beginners. It felt less like the author wanted to illuminate the time period through the story of two sisters and more like the author thought up two sisters and threw them into WWII. They seemed out of place and not very believable, just caricatures of people who lived through the hardships of war.