The Women by @kristinhannahauthor
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

WOW. this is a book I’m going to be thinking about for a very long time. Kristin Hannah is one of my very favorite authors, and this has been a highly anticipated read for me. Emotional, touching, and educational. I felt like I was in Vietnam with the main character Frankie, experiencing the life that she lived as a nurse in the Army. Couldn’t recommend more! Thank you @netgalley for this ARC, The Women comes out this week, 2/6📚🫶🏻🎊

Five huge stars for this one!
Totally brilliant and well written.
Kristin Hannah is known for unforgettable stories and unforgettable characters. This story and these characters will be on my mind for a very long time. It was emotional, deep, heart wrenching and beautifully told. Do yourself a favour and pick this one up.

The Women
My first five star read of 2024! WOW! I loved this book. Kristin Hannah is an auto read author for me and she just knocks it out of the park with her newest novel, The Women, out this Tuesday!

The Women follows 20 year old Frances “Frankie” McGrath as she enlists in the US Army to serve her country as a nurse during Vietnam. The first part of this book takes place in Vietnam, the second part in California when Frankie returns home. I could not believe the way the Vets were treated when they arrived back on US soil. 💔

I knew very little about Vietnam going into this book. I found that I learned so much and it was evident how much research went into the writing of this novel. I had so many different emotions while reading. I absolutely loved Frankie and rooted her on the whole way. This was such an important story to tell and I recommend everyone pick this one up on February 6th!

Thank you @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the advanced e copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Kristen Hannah writes about strong women in all her novels. Her latest, “The Women”, highlights Frankie, a nursing school graduate who enlists in the Army to be near her brother, stationed in Vietnam. Naïve Frankie arrives in-country as a young recruit, not quite removed from her privileged life in a California country-club enclave, untrained in trauma situations, and certainly not worldly. Two nurses in the same unit take her under their wings and become lifelong friends.
Frankie matures rapidly under such harsh realities and becomes a skilled nurse at the same time. The first part of the book details her life there, detailing the gruesome, the touching, the heart-breaking. She experiences love, loss, death, separation, and deception as she perseveres through two tours of duty.
In the later part of the book, Hannah details the realities of Vietnam veterans returning home from an increasingly unpopular war. The cruelty that they face is unrelenting and devastating. No one, even other Vietnam veterans, want to acknowledge that women were there during the conflict. After much internal struggling and help from her two friends, she begins to figure out how she can assimilate into life in a meaningful way.
This book was meaningful to me as this was my generation. I sang and danced to the same songs as Frankie. I understood the mood of the country during that time, saw the same news clips and read the same stories as all those who remained safely at home.
Hannah has written a powerful book; one that she took many years to develop. This is what she said about the novel in a Goodreads interview:
“ I first pitch a novel about a nurse in Vietnam to an editor in 1996. She just said to me, point blank, “I don't think you're ready. This is a really important story. This is a really big story. You're too young, you didn't live through it, you know, as an adult. And so, you know, come back to me when you are because it's a great idea. You're just not ready.”
"I kept coming back to it, I kept wanting to do it. But, you know, to be honest, there was a big period of time where people were very clear that they did not want to read about Vietnam, watch movies about the Vietnam War. This was just an era that didn't want to be talked about. "

I am so glad that Hannah came back to this story. It was well written, enlightening, and educational—all the reasons that we read. My thanks to St. Martin’s Press, NetGalley and Kristen Hannah for an advanced copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

THE WOMEN by Kristin Hannah is a powerful and moving story of a country divided by the epic events occurring in the 1960s. It was a time of a new style of music, free love, and violent protests against the very unpopular war in Vietnam that is taking the lives of countless young service people. Frances “Frankie” McGrath is a twenty-year-old nursing student. She makes the unimaginable decision to join the Army Nurse Corps for a tour as a surgical nurse in Vietnam. Every day, Frankie and her fellow nurses face traumatic injuries, death and destruction at every turn. To survive each brutal day, the women forge deep bonds of friendship and support that help keep them strong. But what happens when these amazingly brave and patriotic veterans come home? America is a country that wants to forget Vietnam. The way returning servicemen and women are treated is appalling. Veteran’s services are only available for male soldiers. The government won’t even acknowledge that any women even served in Vietnam. THE WOMEN is a heart-wrenching, thought-provoking and controversial story that I know I won’t soon forget. Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read and review an early copy.

This book is everything and I cannot recommend it enough!

Strong females that pull each other up!!! Devastation that broke my heart multiple times!!
Personal growth and mental health struggles!!!
Finding your own identity!!
Strong friendships!

Shattered my heart and put it back together multiple times! Halfway through I knew I needed a physical copy and preordered it. I’m so excited for my copy to arrive on release day, Tuesday!

Bottom line: read this book!!

Kristin Hannah never disappoints and this book is no exception, as once again I was entertained and educated. This is a powerful story about the women who went to Vietnam, the trauma they experienced and the lack of respect and help available for them when they returned home. The repetition of the phrase "There were no women in Vietnam", by those with the ability to help, built up the frustration of both the main character and the reader. (There were 11,000 women that served there, mostly as nurses.) This is also a story of friendship, romance and a somewhat dysfunctional family. Hannah does a wonderful job of pulling me into the life of her characters and allowing me to 'walk in their shoes'.. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. I really liked this one. 4.5/5!

Everyone knows Kristin Hannah is at the top of her game for all things Historical Fiction and The Women was an absolute stand-out novel about surviving, overcoming, and being forgotten.

I love Kristin Hannah and knew I just had to read The Women. What intrigued me most was that this book was about the Vietnam War. Now a large majority of historical fiction takes place around World War I and II and the Civil War. You don’t hear too many that are based during the Vietnam War and I was intrigued. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it because I am a WWII story lover, but I knew I had to try… because Kristin Hannah!

The story follows Frankie as she enlists and goes off to be a nurse in the Vietnam War. It is far more than she expected as she tried to help and stay alive, while also hearing upset from stateside. The story had me hook, line, and sinker from the first chapter. It was constant movement and then constant action. I loved how many aspects of life were the focus. It was about grief, friendships, love, family ties, and so much more. It was jam-packed with action and the descriptions left you feeling all the things the characters were feeling. I grieved the losses right along with the characters. I cried. I laughed out loud. I gasped more than once. I literally could not stop reading. I started and finished this book in 19 hours and it’s 480 pages! I could not put it down.

Kristin Hannah has an impeccable writing style that keeps you drawn in, wanting more, and needing to know how it all wraps up. I kept guessing how this story was going to play out and each time she threw a wrench in my plans. I was not expecting so many twists and turns in historical fiction, but that is what she delivered. I’m practically begging the movie-making beings to turn this into a film because there has never been anything like it and I want to see these characters come to life. Just don’t mess it up!

You have to read this. It’s not if it’s your type of novel. It’s an absolute must-read. Hannah did her research, talked to people who were there and lived it, and it’s heartwrenchingly good. A rollercoaster of a story that makes your heart beat faster, then breaks it over and over again until you finally get that ending you didn’t even know you wanted!

Kristin Hannah never fails! When you read the summary of her books, they kinda seem similar to one another but then you actually sit down and read and it is completely a new story and world. Out of all of the books I have read of hers, historical fiction war times are my favorite. I was really able to immerse myself in this book. Can't wait to get my hands on a physical copy! I don't love reading on my phone so I will say this took longer for me to download and get into, but it was really good!

Mheh. Some was interesting. Some glossed over. A couple of repetitive plot twists. Not as good as her other novels.

This book is such a beautiful tribute to the women that served in Vietnam. I am not going to lie though, it wrecked me emotionally the entire time I was reading this book. Set during the Vietnam War, it shows the shift of American popular opinion, as the war went from being generally supported to the shock over governmental lies about fatalities began turning that tide. As a child of a Vietnam veteran and a Vietnamese woman, I knew I wanted to read this book as soon as possible. I felt everything Frankie felt and saw what she felt - it gave me a different viewpoint of the war and all the people involved. Frankie was an amazing character and survived so much. I could have kept reading about Frankie forever. Thank you, Kristin Hannah, for this book. Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a digital arc of this title.

I am one who truly enjoys historical fiction. Kristin Hannah is one of my go to authors for this. There are too few stories of the women who served in Vietnam. I was sucked into the struggles Frankie had within this story. The feelings I had when I went from rooting for a character to wishing the worst for them. (Not Frankie) Highly recommend

{3.5 stars}

I forgot Kristin Hannah is the queen of depressing reads. Her books really are hit or miss for me. I thought I would love this one, I was obsessed with Cherry Ames, a set of books written in the 1940s about a girl who becomes a nurse and several of her books were her time in the military. I was hoping for a similar vibe from this. I think it had that and definitely M*A*S*H vibes for the first half. The realities of war and how people react in different ways was a really important message. Illustrating women's role in Vietnam, which has been downplayed, is super important as well.

What I didn't love was Frankie. She was very sheltered and a little snooty and while she eventually came out of her shell, some of the things that happened to her after the war were due to her personality. I'm not talking the PTSD, those parts were great and well written. But her relationship with her parents, friends and love interests were really hard to read. That part of the book was overly long to me. I needed 100 less pages and less of Frankie putting herself in the same situations over and over.

Thanks to St Martin's Press for gifted access via the Netgalley. All the opinions above are my own.

“In this crazy, chaotic, divided world that was run by men, you could count on the women.”

The Women follows the life of Frankie McGrath, a wealthy young woman from California, beginning in the 1960s. Seeking to find her purpose in life and make her family proud, she enlists as a nurse in the Army during the Vietnam War. Frankie is soon presented with the atrocities of war. Friendships, love, death, loss, and heartbreak are all woven into her story. Frankie starts to realize just how horrible the Vietnam War is, how the US is not the innocent player that they portray themselves as, and how more and more of American society opposes the war.

Upon Frankie’s return, she is met with shame, ridicule, and rampant sexism. She has much difficulty reintegrating into society and begins to self-medicate to cope. Through a series of events, Frankie must learn to carry on as a new version of herself rather than the young, naive girl who went off to war.

What a wonderful change to read about the Vietnam war from a nurse’s point of view! The Women was well-researched and engaging.

This time in history holds a close place in my heart. As my parents personally experienced the surrounding events of this time, I was able to discuss their memories and viewpoints with them. My dad grew up in Washington, D.C. and told me about the protests occurring against the war. This also brought back memories of conversations that I had with my grandmother about her own experiences. Hearing the stories of she told of her friend losing her husband at the hands of the KKK, watching Bobby Kennedy come to their house to pay his respects, and the her memories of the fight for civil rights has always stayed with me. Especially considering how little has changed in 60 years. This was a stark reminder of the need to learn through history and how in many ways history is currently repeating itself.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy of this title in exchange for my honest review.

My 2024 reading was already off to a great start, and The Women just made it even better. I know that a Kristin Hannah book is going to be a captivating reading experience, but my goodness, The Women was even better than I had hoped, and trust me, my expectations were already set at the highest bar.

What does any reader want more than anything when they open a book? They want to feel. I felt this story right down to my core. So many emotions passed through me as I lived right beside Frankie McGrath during the most tumultuous years of her life.

War stories always hit hard, but this particular one really packed a punch. All of my senses were working overtime as if I were there in Vietnam, in the heat, mud, blood, and humidity. This book played out right in front of me, and it was heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and made me feel so enraged.

In my opinion, Frankie was every bit of a hero for her country. She had lived a privileged life, but she didn’t just want to be someone’s wife, she wanted to make a difference, be someone that she and her family would be proud of. That doesn’t sound so unreasonable to me, but it was a different time. She may not have been in actual combat, but she was right there alongside her fellow nurses and doctors, fighting for people’s lives. She experienced the pain, the fatigue, and the overwhelming sense of loss. She put herself in harm’s way. She cared about her commitment to a country that ultimately turned its back on her and so many others.

I don’t want to get into too many details about what actually transpired in Frankie’s story, that is for the individual reader to explore. I will say that this book had me thinking about it long after the final page was read. The Women will not be forgotten and isn’t that really what the women deserve.

*5+ Stars

5⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - If Kristin Hannah has a new book, sign me up! She has delivered another excellent and well written historical fiction novel that will stay with me. This is a heart wrenching story of the unsung and under appreciated heroes of the Vietnam War - the women who served. The book focuses on Frankie McGrath who joined the Army Nurse Corps to follow her brother’s path, and the nurses and soldiers she encounters, the love and strong friendships she makes, and the devastation she experiences during the war and after returning home. Kristin Hannah does a wonderful job telling the full story, including family dynamics, politics, effects of PTSD and trauma, and sexism. I learned so much. Completely engrossing and thought provoking! I highly recommend. I greatly appreciate receiving an advanced copy of this book from St. Martin’s Press via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

The Women is a heartbreaking story of combat nurses who served in the Vietnam War and their lives after war. For Frankie, it was a coming of age story. A sheltered privileged young nursing student, Frankie volunteered for the war on a whim to follow her brother to Vietnam and was forced to grow up fast. I loved reading about the friendships Frankie formed with her fellow nurses. Barb and Ethel were my favorite characters. The war follows Frankie home and she experiences more and more trauma as she tries to find her footing back in "real life". I had a hard time with just how much trauma Frankie experiences in the last 40% of the book. I do think it was necessary to portray that PTSD affected the women who served just as much as the men, but I did start to feel trauma fatigue by the end of the story. Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC!

It’s no secret that anytime you go to open a new Kristin Hannah book, you are setting yourself up to have your heart ripped out of your chest. She has a way of bringing to life her characters in a way that makes you care so deeply for them. She also brings to light aspects of our history that isn’t always the forefront of knowledge.

With The Women, I honestly never really thought about the complete trauma that the medical doctors and nurses go through during war times. The atrocities that they saw day after day after day during Vietnam had a major impact on their psyche once home and I appreciate that Hannah didn’t just write this book during their service but after and how it impacted their lives forever.

Definitely recommend, but make sure your headspace is right before starting because it is incredibly sad.

Kristin Hannah hits all the right notes in a beautifully written, raw, gritty, and emotional tribute to the women who served as nurses in Vietnam, and other Vietnam veterans as well.

We follow Frankie McGrath, an army nurse in the war that was the cause of such a deep schism in America's history. Through Frankie, (and Hanna's spectacular immersive and descriptive writing) we see the war as it was for those who served, the unfathomable disrespect they received upon returning home after their service, and their deep struggles to get past the trauma of their war experiences and make a life for themselves.

This is a riveting, compelling, and important read. Another well-deserved best-seller for Kristin Hannah. This book rates five stars for me; I would rank it higher if I could. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand what our Vietnam Vets went through. Exceptional in every way!

My sincere thanks to St. Martin's Press for allowing me to access a DRC of this novel via NetGalley. Publication is 2/6/24. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own and are freely given.

I love reading Kristin Hannah's stories. I feel like she brings history to life for me. As a nurse, this book really drew me in and I felt like I got a glimpse at what nursing has been like in the past.

This story is so beautifully written. I loved the underlying theme that women served in the war and were able to make a difference, just like the men. I think Kristin did a beautiful job bringing it to life.