After reading The Nightingale, I remembered that I had once written a short review of another Kristin Hannah novel. That earlier story wasn’t a happy one. The Nightingale isn’t a happy story either, yet it is filled with love, loss, and extraordinary suffering, strength, and endurance.

Dear Reader, Winter Garden, by Kristin Hannah, currently has 107,103 reviews and a 4.5 star rating on Amazon. There is impressive character development in this dramatic novel. It is filled with poetic description and few happy moments. Personally, I prefer stories that aren’t so melancholy. It becomes more interesting a third of the way through when, like a nesting doll, the story-within-the-story truly begins. I found the Russian “Fairy Tale” extremely engaging. I love the c