The Women by Kristin Hannah* is just a brilliant read from start-to-finish. I’m not sure what secret sauce Hannah puts in her writing but I scarcely find a dud among her works (except Another Life, which I did not like). As with most of her books, women and the female experience are at the forefront of the story and no one does historical fiction through a female lens better than Kristin Hannah.

The year is 1965 and the Vietnam War is already in its tenth year of what would ultimately be a conflict that lasts twice that. Frankie McGrath is happily ensconced in her sunny, upper class, Conservative Californian community where the battlefields of Hà Nội are an inconceivable reality for all around her. However, when brother Finley enlists, earning the hard-won pride of their stoic Irish immigrant father, Frankie finds herself drawn to a similar path and uses her nursing degree to join the Army Nurse Corps and follow Finley to ‘Nam.

What unfolds is an incredibly immersive, emotional and epic journey for Frankie, with a whole cast of characters, in both Vietnam and at home, that are so well recognised that even those who are only featured fleetingly leave a lasting impression. The descriptions of “a war that should never have happened” are both startling and important and I found myself reaching for the tissues more than once as Frankie and her veteran found family realise that the American Dream is a lie and that nothing could have prepared them for what they would witness in both the heat of battle and the return to a changed, hostile America that has no interest in support returning vets, let alone those who were female and served behind the scenes.

I spent a few weeks in Vietnam in 2018 and I have never forgotten the pit in my stomach as I learned about the American occupation through the native eye which offers a very different, much more barbaric perspective than Western society was privy to through the American military’s propaganda machine, even all these years later. The Women encapsulates all of those atrocities and then some, moving me to tears more than once. PTSD, womanhood, mental health and addiction are explored with a visceral vulnerability that endears you to Frankie, even though she herself may not be the most likeable person. A stunning feat of historical fiction (although I was questioning why an Irishman - her father - would be so peeved that he could never enlist?!).

What a read!! I have read and loved everyone of this authors stories. I’m not keen on historical fiction however I adored this story. This is a powerful read and a memorable one that will stay with me for a long time.

The heroine Frankie is a courageous young woman who signed up as a nurse in Vietnam. Her story needs to be listened to by so many more people.

I’m already looking forward to seeing what this author writes next.

I liked this book. It charts the life of Frankie who volunteers for Vietnam as a nurse to follow her brother who had just enlisted.

The narrative focuses on how Frankie feels and is perceived by others on her return. While she has sacrificed her mental health and saved countless lives, everyone she encounters back home is either ashamed or a hater. No one recognises that women were in Vietnam or the damage it caused. Even her father pretends she took a trip to Florence.

Only when the world begins to appreciate nurses contributions and the horrors faced can she turn the corner on her life.

Things I loved about The Women:
- The female friendships. The way those women will do anything for each other really made me think about how powerful we can be when we side together.
- The exploration of mental health and trauma, and the layers of pain that can come when your experience is wiped away or ignored.
- The storytelling: I didn't want to put this book down.

Things I wanted more of:
Jamie :)

I feel like there's a sequel in this story... I know I'd love to read it.

Big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher (Pan MacMillan) for providing me with an ARC copy of the book!

This is the first book I have read by Kirstin Hannah and after finishing it I’ll be reading all her back catalogue so impressed was i by this one... Its the story of women who are in Vietnam as nurses during the Vietnam War. A subject I must confess to knowing very little about. Well this book was an emotional and at times heart wrenching read and I loved every chapter.

I really enjoyed this book, it is historical fiction and one of my favourite genres. It is based in 1965 during the Vietnam War.
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. In 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future.
When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
Frankie is overwhelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.
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.
This book kept me enthralled, lots of twists and turns and cliffhangers, it was impossible to guess what was going to happen. This book kept me reading late into the night.

A Kristin Hannah novel rarely disappoints as I have grown to enjoy her novels recently. This is her latest and taps into ideas she considered way back in the 1990s as a young writer. I guess her experience now and mature writing alongside the way her plots instantly involve the reader again prove the richness of her skill.
Americans still have a love/hate relationship with talk of the Vietnam War and in Britain we may be confined by MASH on TV (of which I was a huge fan) and the politicians and protests of the time in the fallout from the failures of the war and the huge death tolls on all sides.
As of the women who were involved in the campaign - the only women I recall were the Vietnamese women shown on war coverage with their hats and often footage of them escaping bombing and the infamous naked girl photographed after an Agent Orange attack.
The characters are believable - more so in situ in Vietnam I thought - but the fallout of Frankie's return from the war into her despair and PTSD built to a dramatic conclusion and explored the anti war campaigns across America.
Usually the love/romance component of Hannah's novels isn't to the fore in such a way as in this story. Frankie's naive approach to men was perhaps at times slightly unbelievable and I felt her pain particularly for the lack of honesty in Rye's character. But there were sympathetic male characters with whom Frankie developed trust and as a nurse myself I fully understood the black humour of horror in surgery and death (although I have never been in war situation) Readers will need to be prepared for the blood and gore and the author has done wide research on a hospital in such a place. With war in Iraq and Afghanistan still fresh in our own minds we can see how soldiers and those such as medics are daily thrown into this 'theatre' of death and despair.
Overall a great read - interesting and emotional. My only criticism was the affluence of Frankie's parents and lifestyle which allowed her the financial recourse to therapeutically recover. But this is only minor.
Make love not war? Well as this novel shows the reader sometimes that isn't quite so easy.....

Frances McGrath is from a Kennedy -idising, wealthy family with social obligations. Her Irish father hss boughht into the US patriot ideal. When his son volunteers to serve in the Vietnam war no one has a clue about the truth of it but his photo joins the study wall of Heroes.

His.younger sister becomes. McGrath. She'd arrived in Vietnam in Army nurse's regulation uniform but finds blood splattered tee and shorts become her new uniform.

Her family understands dead heroes but is ashamed of living victims at a time when the country turns from patriotic ignorance to shunning reminders of the atrocities the US committed.

Frankie finds she can't cope with grieving without the drink she has used as a prop. Her girlfriends support her but cannot put her back together - despite a few attempys that seem to have succeeded.

For a reader aware of draft- burning rebels then much later damaged vets who achieve notoriety by gun massacres this book fills the gaps. I knew of the disgraced president but not that the country as a whole had abandoned the troops that returned whilst even US prisoners of war were left behind.

This story seems very real. Every time Frankie seems to have a chance of happiness her luck runs out. Counting the days to her boyfriend's end of time in Vietnam has a very predictable outcome. The final scenes are a little neat but as a whole it's a grippiing, whirlwind of a book and one I hated to have to leave off.

I read this novel with an open mind because Kristin Hannah, a highly esteemed author, is new to me. She can certainly relate a moving, captivating story with pace, and maintain a reader’s interest. This novel is also well researched.

However, the meticulous attention to detail is a little heavy handed at times when describing outfits and hairstyles, but the gritty and gruelling depictions of war are convincing and very much ring true.

I found the first part, where naive, impetuous Frankie McGrath decides to follow her brother Finley to Vietnam and serves two tours there, making lifelong friends with Barb and Ethel, far more compelling than the second half of the book.

On her return to laidback Coronado Island, Frankie attempts to fit into a society that’s generally hostile and guarded about the war in Vietnam, and convinced that women were unlikely to have served there. She’s lost, driftless, without a clear purpose, and PTSD sends her down dark alleyways.

All very relatable and understandable. Where the narrative disappoints is in giving Frankie such tremendous man-appeal that her romances seem implausible. Was she really so irresistible that every man in sight wants a relationship with her?

I’d have liked greater emphasis on the women in general and more of their individual stories being told, rather than a narrow focus on Frankie, the one character I didn’t particularly like, though I sympathised with her plight.

There’s no doubt the author is a talented writer and can tell a great story, and I’m probably in the minority for not loving every aspect of it. Overall, this is an excellent read and I’m grateful to Pan MacMillan and NetGalley for the eARC.

Absolutely beautiful storytelling. The life of Frankie has you in a chokehold and you won’t want to let go. Kristin never disappoints and I eagerly await her next book already.

As usual an amazing read from Kristin Hannah, my favourite author. As a non American I know very little about the Vietnam war and this was an eye opener for me. Frankie is the most amazing character. Flawed and real. Her story is simply amazing and we go through the full gamit of emotions with her including frustration. There were many “what the f is she doing?!” moments for me! There was one thing that was confusing though. As Ireland has always maintained neutrality in the war, it seemed strange that an Irish father would be so involved with war time and war heroes. It seemed an odd choice. I will miss Frankie and would recommend all to read this great book.

I thank NetGalley and the publisher (Pan MacMillan) for providing me with an ARC copy of the book, which I freely chose to review.
I had read many comments about Kristin Hannah and her novels, but I hadn’t read any yet, so I can’t compare it to her previous work. I have been interested in the Vietnam War and the role the United States played in it for a long time, and I’ve read books (both, fiction and non-fiction), and watched movies, series, and documentaries about it, so this novel seemed a good fit for me.
As the description explains, the novel centres on Frankie, a girl from a navy town in California, whose father has never lived up to his disappointment about not having been able to serve his country, and who worships everything military, in particular, navy-related. He is very proud when his son goes to Vietnam. Unfortunately, things don’t go according to plan, and by the time Frankie has decided to enlist as a nurse, tragedy has already fallen on the family.
The war is a shock for her, but thanks to two of the veteran nurses (Ethel and Barb) and the patience and understanding of the rest of the staff, she develops into a great nurse, and she ends up signing up for a second tour of duty. She is a religious (Catholic) girl, and pretty conventional and naïve, so she tries to keep men at bay at first, following her strict moral standards, but eventually, she ends up having a relationship with a young man she knew from before, and they make plans for the future.
When she returns to the US, she doesn’t get the hero reception she had heard about from WWII. Instead, she is spat on and called names. She had heard of the anti-war movement, but the reality of it hits her hard. That, together with flashbacks and other clear symptoms of PTSD, and a serious loss shortly after her arrival, make her reintroduction into civil life very complicated. Despite the support of her two nurse friends (who’ve both made new lives for themselves), she doesn’t manage to fit in and find her place, and events (and to a certain extent, her own choices and her way of dealing with things, or trying not to deal with them) keep conspiring and take her to breaking point.
This novel is a mixture of historical fiction (it captures well the atmosphere of Vietnam, especially the hospitals, although it doesn’t dedicate much space to the Vietnamese people other than in passing), coming-of-age story, and romance/melodrama. In many ways, Frankie is a typical protagonist of a romantic novel: beautiful, naïve, principled, quite green... All the men she meets fall for her, but she sticks to her rules of conduct, at least initially. She falls in between two eras: her mother (and father) expect her to marry somebody of her upper social class, have babies, and have a full social life, taking an interest in some good causes. At the same time, the Hippy movement has arrived, the Civil Rights Movement is in full swing, and so is the Women’s Liberation Movement. Women are demanding more freedom and taking their destiny in their own lives. Frankie doesn’t seem happy in either of these two worlds, and although she tries to get help for her trauma, nobody acknowledges that there were women in the war, and the veteran services and hospitals are only set to look after those who saw action (as if nurses hadn’t seen more than their fair share of it).
The story is interesting and it’s difficult to put down once you get into it. On the other hand, I never felt too attached to the protagonist, although I empathised with her and felt quite moved by the way things developed towards the end. I would have liked to get to know more about her two friends, Ethel and Barb. We don’t see or hear things from their perspective, and they are never the focus of the novel, although they represent the support and sisterhood well. The part of their experiences in Vietnam and also what Frankie experiences when she gets back home felt realistic and gripping, but the parts related to her relationships felt overdone and melodramatic. There were many coincidences, many tragic events one after another, and I ended up feeling as if I were watching a soap opera gone to extremes for effect. The other aspect that I thought worked well was the coming-of-age side of things, and how Frankie manages to find a way to become independent and to find a meaningful outlook in life. I would have preferred it if the author had avoided the last twist (this is another case of ‘a twist too far’, in my opinion) but I’m sure readers who like romantic novels will enjoy it.
Hannah includes an author’s note, where she explains her interest in the subject and the process of creation of this novel, and a section of acknowledgements which is particularly interesting, as she mentions the people she consulted and recommends some books written by people who survived the experience and others she used as a source, and those will be of interest to people who want to deepen their knowledge of the Vietnam War and the experience of the (western) women who joined the war effort.
In sum, this is a book suited to those interested in historical fiction about the Vietnam War, the role of women in that war, and particularly readers who enjoy a good dose of romance and melodrama mixed into their historically inspired novels.

WOW! What an amazing book! I’m not really a fan of books about war and to be honest I don’t really know much about Vietnam but as soon as I started this book I was captivated. It was a very emotional story about 21 year old Frankie McGrath who decides to sign up as a nurse and head to Vietnam.
Frankie immediately feels like she’s out of her depth but with the love and support of her fellow nurses Barb and Ethel she settles in to life in Vietnam.
This is a very moving and thought provoking story of how the veterans are treated long after the war is finally over..
Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of what I think might well be the best book of the year.

This story was just… immense! I went into this book with zero preconceptions and no clue on the plot or anything (just a brief outline), and I was absolutely gripped from the outset.

There are different parts to the story and it follows one woman who was a nurse for two tours in Vietnam. This being the first part to the story, and everything kind of follows on from that experience. I felt everything that Frankie McGrath went through deep in my heart, and the emotions in this one were high. It was sad, powerful, heartbreaking, happy, frustrating, beautiful and epic, all at once!

The side characters were all perfect - especially Frankie’s fellow combat nurses. I need friends like them!! And the romance plot lines were also epic and emotional - such a rollercoaster ride.

I was just hooked on this one. I was completely and utterly in love with Frankie and wanted her to be happy. It was also eyeopening for me regarding the historical elements, and how women fought in the Vietnam war as nurses and other non-frontline roles. The impact that the war had on America at the time is frightening and I’ll definitely be looking into this more for my own personal education.

Oh my goodness, Kristin Hannah has done it again. There are very few authors whose books always have the power to make me cry but hers always do; a gut-wrenching, incredibly emotional and powerful story about three nurses who served in the Vietnam war. However, this book is so much more than that; it is hard to read at times - the horrifying depictions of wartime atrocities and the destructive path that Frankie was on afterwards - but I feel that this is a very important book that everyone should read.

I received an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Pan Macmillan, and the author Kristin Hannah.
An interesting premise and subject, but I found the writing style too fluffy and contrived at times to fully enjoy it. There were also too many convenient plot devices (BOTH love interests back from the dead?!) The main character also didn't quite click for me and felt two dimensional. Highly readable, but slightly lacking for me. 3 stars.

This was different from Kristin Hannah’s usual books but it was a very powerful and emotional read.
The scenes in Vietnam were very realistic and it was easy to imagine the horrors that were seen there and the sheer helplessness the medics over there felt trying to treat so many in such terrible conditions.
When Frankie returned to the USA the way she was treated as a female veteran was shocking to me. Even taking a nursing job to practice her skill, she was treated like a person with no experience. I find it hard to believe that so many didn’t believe that women had been over there.
The PTSD Frankie suffered was written about so well but it was upsetting to read.
I found this book hard to put down but learned a lot more about the war in Vietnam, the horrors and the aftermath suffered by so many. From a historical point of view this was for me very informative.
An interesting and emotional read.
4 stars

This book had to be written. It was high time.
It makes my blood boil to think how these women were treated once they'd returned from Vietnam.
I devoured the first half of the book in a few hours but then I had to slow down the tempo, and found the second part emotionally draining. I appreciate the thorough research the author did and that comes through the pages. To me this is not a happy book, albeit an important one.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for an Advance Review Copy.

Kristin Hannah's "The Women" brings us back to her signature style of immersive storytelling. Having enjoyed her previous novels, I was really looking forward to this one. The way she writes makes you feel like you're right there in the story, which is something I've always loved about her books.

However, this time around, I ended up giving the book three stars. It starts well but then drags on longer than necessary. Hannah tends to explain too much instead of letting the story unfold naturally, which takes away from the experience. The main character, Frankie, didn't click with me—she comes off as too privileged and not a very accurate representation of Vietnam vets. Also, the book has a lot of focus on men behaving badly, which makes the title "The Women" seem a bit off. It felt like it should have been called "The Men" instead. ("A boy told me girls can be heroes, too") While the writing was good, the book didn't meet my high expectations and left me feeling a bit disappointed.

This is a story about a young, recently qualified nurse who joins the Army Nurse Corps and goes to Vietnam. This is a tale about the power of female friendships, the relationships she forms, and the trauma she experienced. This is a book about Women being written out of history, about Women holding one another up, and about recognising the strength from within 'In this crazy, chaotic, divided world that was run by men, you could count on the Women'...Read it!