Powerful! I read historical fiction all the time however, I feel little has been written on this this often hushed war. Kristin Hannah, packs it all in with this hard hitting depiction of the Women who sacrificed their lives in Vietnam during the war. Although predictable at times The Women has a few turns to keep you engaged throughout this novel. Love, friendship, addiction and family drama all wrapped into this engaging read!

Frankie is young and naive when she heads out to war, she returns broken and dismissed. Hearing "there were no women in Vietnam" everywhere, even from those who served.
How do we show up for others?

If you like Kristin Hannah, this is a must read, if you are new to her novels, be aware she does her research and her stories will run you through all the emotions!

Quite possibly the best book I’ve read to date in 2024. By description alone, Kristin Hannah’s novels consistently fail to capture my attention or stir up strong interest. But having read several of her previous works, I know that once I start in, the power and depth of her storytelling and subjects fully envelops my imagination and emotions. The Women is at once educational, heartbreaking, rage-inducing, and eye-opening to the bleak reality of so many young people of that generation. I’ll be widely recommending this novel.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for allowing me to read and review The Women on NetGalley.

Narrators: Julia Whelan; Kristin Hannah

Published: 02/06/24

Stars: 3.5

This was a confusing tale and a disappointment for me. Hannah takes on the Vietnam War and the 60s. She chooses a young, naive, female nurse as her main character in this general women's fiction book (not historical). The synopsis summarizes the book adequately, therefore I'm not going to repeat it.

Frankie's parents are pro America and Service as long as you are male. The friction between her and her parents carries throughout the book. When sent to Vietnam, her parents are ashamed and won't admit where she went to friends and family. In addition, news and government organizations are claiming no women are in or went to Vietnam. This storyline goes on throughout the book. In a nut shell, Frankie comes back to the fractured family and now she is scarred by all the trauma she witnessed working in a makeshift surgical hospital. Up to this point, I believe the story carried itself and was well worth my time. The reminders of how Americans treated one another during that period were stifling, what soldiers endured was sickening: I teared up several times.

Hannah cheapened the story with several ridiculous romances. The ending infuriated me. It was not realistic. Two people do not find each other in a crowd of 100,000 -- accidentally. They weren't looking for each other (as if). It just was wrong. And that is just one of the relationships. No spoilers here.

Julia Whelan was brilliant as always.

Leave it to Kristin Hannah to write another mega hit! "The Women" is an amazing saga surrounding the atrocities of war, and strong, flawed, female characters who manage to live and love like they know life is short and worth revering.

Frances "Frankie" McGrath was told once by a family friend "Women can be heroes too" and that moniker changed the course of her life forever. Soon after her brother, whom she idolized, was drafted and shipped out, Frankie enlisted in the Army to serve as a wartime nurse in Vietnam. She desperately wanted to be a hero like her brother and other war-time male family members before her. Unfortunately, Frankie was a young, naive, inexperienced registered nurse who led a sheltered, country-club kind of life in Coronado, California. She had no inkling of what she was getting herself into.

As one might expect, war was much different than Frankie anticipated, than the media portrayed and from what the public thought it was like. She realized almost immediately upon landing in Vietnam, that she had gotten herself into terrible trouble. "The Women" tells a story of a little girl that goes off to war, who comes home a different woman. Frankie must come to terms with the horrors she experienced during the war, and must learn to forgive herself for the mistakes she made along the way.

"Sometimes hurts don't completely heal that's life." - Frankie McGrath.

Thanks to Kristin Hannah, Net Galley, & McMillian Audio for this Audio ARC for an honest review. Congratulations on another best seller!

This was an excellent book about women serving in the Vietnam war and the way they were treated when they returned. The portrayal of PTSD felt really honest.

The Women is a compelling novel that explores the lives of the women nurses in the Vietnam War. Women of war were greatly ignored and often heard the phrase, “There were no women in Vietnam.” Their services were not regarded as heroic like the men who served.
This novel was extraordinary in every way. The plot, characters, pacing, and writing style brought this story to life.

I'm the first to admit that The Women isn't my normal read. I've tried Kristin Hannah in the past and qualified it as too forced emotionally. But when everyone started talking about this book and how it impacted them, I decided to give it a try. This book is a triumph. It sheds light on a portion of the historical web that is the Vietnam War, along with forcing the impact that women had on the war and how they were overlooked onto center stage. I love following the story of a normal woman who is faced with adversity, becomes strong and impactful in the face of the hell of war, but falls victim to the demons that haunt her when she returns to the deceptive calm of peacetime. This book is remarkable and will help women around the world see themselves in the struggles that veterans face. Frankie is love and warmth and strength and frailty and just so unerringly human. The writing is wonderful, the pace is even and strong, and the voice is unflinchingly honest.

The narration has an ebb and flow that follows the story of Frankie's life. The voice wavers when it needs to and transmits resistance and strength when it should. This is a book where I need to believe the narrator is embodying the character, and they most certainly do.

6 Stars!! This book was so well researched and written with care! I felt so much for Frankie’s struggles and battles with her daemons as well as her drive to join the war effort! It was another Kristin Hannah home run!

The Women is probably going to be one of my favourite books for 2024. The book begins in 1965, when the US began sending active military troops to Vietnam. I spent a lot of time googling the war, the timeline and results during and after reading this book and I learned so much. The heart of this story was the role of nurses in Vietnam and what happened to them after the war. Frances “Frankie” McGrath is a newly graduated nurse, and is not pleased with the jobs she is given at the hospital she is working at. How will she ever become a better nurse, if she doesn't get the chance to do different jobs. Her brother has recently enlisted and gone to Vietnam, so when she is looking for something more challenging, she enlists as a nurse. The story follows her as she learns her role, works, falls in love, deals with all the dangers, comes home and deals with the PTSD and treatment by others.

Frankie is a wonderful character. Kristin Hannah wrote such well developed, yet flawed and real characters. I love Frankie's reasoning for going into the situations she did, "Women can be heroes too.". The descriptive writing of the horrors of the field hospitals, the death, the mutilation etc. was difficult to read, but it gave me such a view of what the women in Vietnam would have been dealing with. What heroes they were. When she returns to the US, she tries to fit in, but once again, she is put back in that little box and not given the opportunity to work at a job that she would have been excellent at. Dealing with her mental health, she tries to get help, but the attitude, even at the VA hospitals was women didn't see combat, therefore they didn't need services. Not only were the soldiers vets, but the women who were in the field hospitals, who were also putting themselves at risk. This is a book I recommend to anyone who wants to see what it was like for the women who voluntarily went to Vietnam to work in the hospitals, at the front and behind, and how they finally healed and moved on with their lives despite the odds. Kristin Hannah does an amazing job with this story and the research that went into it. Once I started listening to it, I couldn't stop and I highly recommend you have a large amount of time available once she start this one. Julia Whelan narrates this story and does an absolutely amazing job with the many characters she has to voice as well as her storytelling. I was mesmerized by this one.

I read/listened to this book because I could not wait to read and finish it. I was hooked from the beginning and the twists and turns that it took me were all the feels.

This book was everything. I literally sobbed multiple times, but man did I love this one. Women are so important and the work they do is often overlooked. This book is not only about women but also soldiers and full of very important issues like mental health and civil rights along with women’s rights. This is an absolute must read!

Another stunning, heartbreaking and inspirational novel from one of the true greats, Kristin Hannah. She creates works like no other with the way she puts words to paper. Frankie is one of the best leads I’ve read in a book. I instantly fell in love with her. I was brought to tears listening to this piece of history that I know, though, fictional is the story of so many from Vietnam. The death, the pain, the fear.

I can’t say enough about his beautiful piece of work.

And of course the incomparable Julia Whelan took Hannah’s words and narrated them so eloquently as only she can.

Thank you, Kristin Hannah, MacmillanAudio & netgalley for my audiobook! All opinions are my own.

Kristin Hannah takes history and gives us haunting tales of the women who were there-- a perspective often not told. I love her books best when the environment is an antagonist, and this one does that. But be warned, as with all her books, it's emotional torture. I will be buying copies of the book for my shop.

Thanks to NetGalley I received an advanced copy of this beautiful book. Kristin Hannah is my absolute favorite author, and I thought this book would just book good. WOW was I wrong. First, I learned so much about the emotions and difficulties that my parents generation faced in connection with such a controversial war. The character development that Hannah is known for still existed, and I immediately fell in love with Frankie, Barb, and E. For some time, while reading, I grappeled with some of the love choices that developed in the story (no spoilers) and in the end I truly realized why these were so important. First, Hannah needed to stick with the themes, being remembered matters, recognition is truly important, and love comes from so many places. All in all, I think this book is a gorgeous novel that I hope to read many more times as I will now miss the characters that I deeply fell in love with.

This book was totally intriguing and kept me glued to it from the start.

Frankie (Francis) McGrath sits idly by as a big party is thrown for her brother who will be entering the military. In her father's home there is a "Heros Wall". As Frankie stares at it, she hears a saying that sticks to her "Women Can Be Heros Too".

Frankie decides to join the Army Nurse Corps and her goal is to go to Vietnam.

Once there, Frankie realizes that this is so much more realistic and scarier than she had thought when she signed up.

Frankie forms lifelong bonds with the other nurses and even gets her heart broken, but she perseveres and in the end, she comes home to a different world then she left. Although the Army Nurse Corps saw a lot of soldiers sick or dying, when they returned home it was as if they were nothing. The people staged rallies, protests and it took a toll on the women who served their Country.

This book is a book I highly recommend to anyone, it was eye opening for me and I absolutely devoured and loved this book.

5 stars

This book is why I love historical fiction.
I loved the story, the pacing, the audiobook, everything.
Kristin Hannah really does know how to tell a story.

Thank you to @Macmillan.Audio for this NetGalley audiobook release of
Kristin Hannah’s The Women. I’ve read a few of Kristin Hannah’s books and have always come away wanting to reread the book right away. The Women was no different.
Frankie is a nurse who joined the military to fight for her country, her family, and her own voice. Once in Vietnam she realizes quickly what people are being told at home isn’t what she is witnessing. Upon returning home she is met with a very different country than the one she left. She receives the cruelty and hate so many young people who returned from the war received. She wants to bring awareness to the PTSD and grief so many of the military and medical teams face on a daily basis only to be told she couldn’t possibly understand as she’s just a woman. Frankie is human and flawed. She seeks comfort and relationship where she sometimes should have run. I cheered for her as she found a strong group of women nurses in Vietnam set on making a difference once home, bringing light to the truths of the Vietnam war, and helping those who deal with mental health journeys very few understood at the time.
Julia Whelan is one of my favorite audiobook narrators so I was very excited to see she was narrating this one. I could listen to her read just about anything, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to listen to her narration of this book. Like many of her books, Hannah took me on an emotional ride that was sometimes heavy and other times joyful.
⁣I have read quite a few historical fiction books, but this is the first time I have read a historical fiction set in Vietnam. Hannah has a way of not shying away from the trials and horrors of war while also showing us that found family and romantic connection can be discovered in any situation. Julia Whelan’s wonderful narration brought depth and compassion to Frankie and those in her life.
⁣ I would recommend reading or listening to the audiobook.
⁣Thanks, @macmillan.audio, for the gifted audiobook!⁣
⁣#TheWomen #KristinHannah #MacmillanAudio #StMartinsPress #AudiobookReview #JuliaWhelan #Audiobooks #Bookstagram #BookReview #HistoricalFictionBooks #BookRec

Book Review:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

You would have to be living under a rock this past month to have avoided hearing about Kirstin Hannah’s latest book, The Women. My bookstagram feed has been inundated with posts about this historical fiction masterpiece, so much so that I have had to make a conscientious decision to stay away until I had the opportunity to finish it.

With that being said, this review will not focus on Hannah’s writing. You can be assured that it is top tier as she dedicated many years to this project. All I will say is as a millennial who had very little knowledge about The Vietnam War, I was enlightened. I attribute this to Hannah doing her research and compiling an amazing team of consultants who helped her bring the story to life. While Francis McGrath and the rest of the characters are fictional, they represent so many men and women of their time.

I had the pleasure of listening to the audiobook version of The Women thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio. My go to medium for consuming books is and will always be to read them in print. However, this is probably the only book I will EVER recommend the audio version.

Macmillan Audio did a phenomenal job creating this audiobook. They found the perfect narrator in Julia Whelan. Whelan is one of the most talented voice actress in her field. I am not sure what awards or accolades a narrator can be given, but she deserves all of them. The way she was able to distinguish every character with just her voice, while single handedly making Hannah’s words come to life, was unlike anything I have ever experienced before.

When my time listening to The Women came to an end I was utterly devastated to have to say goodbye to McGrath. I truly loved everything about the book. So much so, that only three months into 2024 I am going to call it now, this will be my favorite book of the year and perhaps ever. If you read one book this year make it Kristin Hannah’s The Women, preferably the audiobook version!!!

Special thanks to Kristin Hannah, Netgalley, and Macmillan Audio for allowing me to listen to this book in exchange for my honest review.

I expected this to be a really good book. It was even more. Ms. Hannah has taken a subject very few know much about and educated the reader about a very painful time for our country. I was thirteen when the Vietnam War ended. I was aware of the war but certainly never had the insight into what those who served went through, much less how traumatic it was for the women who served.

The story of Frankie's service as a nurse, her return home, and her resuling PTSD was deeply emotional and filled with despair. It was definitely not an easy story to read, but such an important story to read. It makes you stop and ponder your own beliefs about the war and those who served their country and were ridiculed for it. It made me stop and think about my husband's service in Afghanistan and his resulting PTSD (and yes, they really do wind up on the floor during nightmares). It makes me wish I had spent more time listening to him when he came home. This story has made me determined to listen to him more about his service and ask questions.

Thank you for this book, Ms. Hannah.

I listened to the amazing audio version of this book narrated by Julia Whelan (who did an amazing job) mixed with reading the book.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the gifted copies. All thoughts are my own.
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It’s 1965 and the world is changing. Frances “Frankie” McGrath has always had an idyllic life and had had her future set for her. But she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path, having no idea how this decision will affect the course of the rest of her life. Frankie is thrown into the war and is immediately overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

“Maybe happy now, happy for a moment, is all we really get. Happy forever seems like a shitload to ask in a world on fire.”

Wow, Kristin Hannah has done it once again. Kristin Hannah has been a long time favorite author of mine and each book of hers has wrecked me. I absolutely admire her ability to write about heavy subjects (domestic abuse, the Great Depression, women in the Vietnam War, etc.) and do it so eloquently. I always walk away from her books learning something. I loved this emotional historical fiction book about a part of the Vietnam War you don’t often hear much about. This book is powerful and will have you feeling joy, anger, pain and fear for what these women and men went through during and post-war. It’s evident the amount of research that went into writing this book and I really enjoyed the author’s note at the end of the book. This book is 450+ pages of heavy, war stories but is an incredible read that will certainly be one of my favorites of the year. Also, Julia Whelan narrates this one and it’s great on audio too (I bounced back and forth between listening and reading!) I always appreciate Julia's soothing voice and her differentiation of character voices!