I accepted the publisher's invitation to download an ARC of Nightingale because I previously enjoyed Amy Lukavics' Daughters Unto Devils and I'm looking for more scary stuff for our library's teen collection.

Nightingale and I got off to a rough start, because it features one of my least favorite horror tropes: the first person "am I crazy or is the horror real?" narrator. June, the main character, has been committed to an asylum and goes back and forth between being sure the people around her are fake and wondering if she's imagining it. The unspecified incident that got her committed is obviously the key to the whole thing, as June spends most of the 'present' narrative trying not to think about it, while the 'past' narrative slowly builds up to it. There were enough weird and scary things happening in the 'present' to keep me entertained until the reveal and the answers, when they came, took the story in a very interesting and cool direction.

The villain describes June as 'weak and fearful' at one point, and I kind of agree, to the point where I was beginning to lose patience with her. I must have cared about her though, because the way her repressive 1950s family treated her left me enraged. Her mother, father, brother, and boyfriend are universally terrible, and I found it baffling that she still cared what they thought. In fact, you don't have to embellish much to make 1950s female life options or conditions in a postwar mental institution into a horror book. Much of what the Nurse Ratched-esque villain inflicts on the characters (drugged stupors, restraints, electroshock, lobotomy) were all real 'treatments' at the time.

June's roommate Eleanor is the only other patient at the hospital whose character is fleshed out enough to be memorable. The others are introduced with only one identifying feature (which I quickly forgot) resulting in them being largely interchangeable. When terrible things happened to them, I found it difficult to care, except in the ticking clock way that meant June would probably be next.

Overall, Nightingale was very creepy and I would recommend it to anyone who likes Stephen King's Carrie or Eleven's plotline from Stranger Things.

So this is the first book of Amy's that I have read. But this cover drew me in.
June Hardie is a seventeen years old in the 1950s. She's everything that she shouldn't be- independent, rebelious, and a dreamer - instead of being a "better young lady" or a perfect wife and daughter that is expected of her. She wants to travel, go away to college, she wants to write her story after graduating high school but her parents want her to marry the boss's son. When she refused to be what her parents want,the commit her to the Institution- Burrow Place Asylum. In the institution, the medical staff seem terrifying, the treatments brutal, and it prrys and June's darkest fears and secrets. Any who dare speak up dissappear- or worse. June is now trapped in a grusome reality and sinister hallucinations, unsure of where her nightmares end and her life begins. In order to survive June must destroy the institue before it claims everyone admitted.
The story plays out between chapters that take place "before" and "after" June was admitted into the Institution. I was intrigued to find out what happened "before" causing June to be admitted, and unable to look away during what had been happening "after" even if it was the stuff of nightmares. Was June crazy? Did the stress of her life finally get to her? Or was what happening both before she was admitted, and during her admission actually real? June didn't know herself. She didn't know if what the other patients were saying was true. But she knew something felt wrong- whether or not it was with herself (did her mind finally crack under the pressure?), Or the fact that what happened was actually true was what June had to figure out.
I liked the mystery and suspense of the book. I liked how June was different and challenged what she was "suppose" to be. And feel this is the perfect fall read, if you are looking for a mild thriller. It was a little strange, a little terrifying, and a little frustrating all in one and wasn't at all what I expected. In the end I wanted June to finally get retribution for the injustice of everything she had been through. If you like sci-fi, monsters, or stories set in the 1950s with bad medical practices and young women who want to break the mold of who they are suppose to be this may just be for you.
4⭐ out of 5⭐.

The description really grabbed me. However, I'm just not sure about the book. It was certainly creepy, but it was just ... off in some way. A lot of the time, I wasn't sure what was supposed to be going on, and I just felt lost. It seemed like the author didn't know what was happening, either. There was a sci-fi feel to it that I wasn't really expecting. The parts that were good were really good. But the rest was just lacking. Some parts were rushed, and others dragged along. The story felt very unbalanced overall. I've never read anything by this author before. I may give her a try again in the future, but I"m not sure.

This review was posted on Goodreads, and I'll post on Amazon after the book is released.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy from NetGalley, but I wasn't required to leave a positive review.

2 Stars
Review by Sue
Late Night Reviewer
Up All Night w/ Books Blog

Nightingale by Amy Lukavics had a wonderful premise and had me gearing up for a book that would give me chills.

Unfortunately, it was not what I was expecting.

June Hardie is a teenager in the 1950s that is ahead of her time. She does not want to be confined to the role of wife and mother and all that they imply during those times. She bulks and chafes at the notion that this will be her life but, she finds an outlet and an absolute obsession with her writing. Here, she escapes time and place.

When life becomes too much for June and she strikes out, her parents admit her to Burrow Place
Asylum, a mental health facility.

Burrow Place is not all it seems. The nurses have no real care for their patients or procedure and the Doctor barely interacts during the minimal sessions he holds.

As June spends more and more time in the Asylum the lines between what is real and what is not blur.

Will June ever find her way out of the Asylum and have the life she’s always dreamed of?

This story is told in third person and flashes between present and past events.

Throughout most of the book, I couldn’t connect with the main character, June. It almost felt like June had a personality disorder. She cared for no one or nothing except the book she was writing and was overall apathetic. Although this makes sense to the overall plot of the book, it didn’t make me like or connect with her or the book any better.

Towards the end, I did become interested and invested not to mention intrigued. The ending itself, for me, however, was rather disappointing and cliched.

This story was written well. I just had a hard time trying to empathize with the main character and thus, the book. Because of this, I would ask that you seek other reviews as well to make an informed decision on whether or not this book is for you.

**ARC provided for an honest review**

The Nightingale is the story of a young woman who finds herself put into a mental institution after spending her life not wanting to be the ideal young woman her parents want, especially when one day she looks around and the world is not what she expected. Full of horror and terror, this book does not hold back. The level of gruesome, scary moments was actually something I liked about this book, it wasn't afraid to be really gritty and gory and that was great. But the story itself just wasn't my favorite and was sort of dull for me. I liked the idea of this book, trying to find out what was true and what was delusion as we follow the main character in the mental hospital, but the ending wasn't really my favorite and I wanted more out of the story.

This would be a great book for older teens and young adults in college. Because I have an educator's account and perspective, I am always asked if I would recommend a book for a class or a reading recommendation list. My answer is that it has an edgy tone, language, and some sexual situations that would prevent a teacher or a K-12 librarian from placing this on a class list or lesson plan. However, the book itself is appropriate for high school students in grades 11 and 12 if they want some suspenseful Science Fiction/Horror reading.

Students who are questioning their sexuality would enjoy the conflict and chemistry between June, Eleanor, and Robert near the end of the story. This set of relationships has a very adult feel and reminds me of other novels from the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's, such as the Stepford Wives and other popular fiction that gives a political commentary about women's roles.

I really enjoyed the Rod Serling/Twilight Zone and pulp fiction atmosphere near the end. The plot twists were exciting and the ending was fitting to the rest of the story. I loved the gore but realize that this book is not for everyone. There were some issues with June's return to earth at the end of the novel that would be unbelievable in most other kinds of book. The ending works with this book because of the older Sci-Fi plot and the technology someone would read about in fictional works and view on TV during the 1950's and 1960's.

Nightingale is supposed to be a horror novel about a young woman, June, who lives in suburbia with her family in what appears to be the United States in the late 1950s/early 1960s, and who, when the book opens, is apparently in a mental hospital.

I think that Ms. Luckavics means for Nightingale to be a novel about how societal expectations then could drive any woman mad, with maybe parallels to today (though I'm giving Ms Luckavics the benefit of the doubt on that one) and place it in the guise of a horror novel.

Problem is, the book is such a mess that it doesn't work. It takes a little too long to establish that the setting is not now, and June's sanity is so clearly already in pieces that the whole story, which I think is meant to show that madness was June's only escape, just feels like one long bad dream, which, ta da! is kind of what the ending is.

I think the ending is supposed to be June's mind finally breaking or maybe symbolic but at that point, I know longer cared.

June was hard to enjoy, which is the book's biggest flaw. Of course the life she was leading prior to "the institution" was awful, and I can see why she longed to escape, but Ms Luckavics didn't give me any real reason to care, other than that June was mired in a crappy family. Her one attempt to break free is so wrapped into her stay in "the institution" that it muddles the "horror" aspect of the novel and the ending are just...there. In wanting the reader see the message so badly, Ms Luckavics forgot to let readers feel anything.

Tldr: Authorial intent leads to listless main character and plodding journey. A ham-fisted mess.

This book started out pretty interesting, but was not what I expected and turned into something crazy. I didn't realize that the author wrote horror novels, so I guess it makes sense how the story went. Not sure I'd recommend.

This book was okay. I kept reading through because I wanted to know the ending, but parts of the plot felt disjointed. Where did the doctor and nurse originate?

The gender stereotypes and expectations of 1950s America is an interesting angle for a horror novel to take, and I would have been interested in reading that novel. This book, however, doesn't commit to that angle. I was more interested in the politics of June's home life in the "Days Past" sections than I was in what ended up being sci-fi sections of June in the institution. Seeing how independent, free-thinking women were treated by families, suitors, and institutions (like schools, communities, hospitals, etc) is important in the Me Too era. Nightingale, though, becomes more about the shock and awe of its sci-fi and mystery elements as it progresses, and the resolution isn't satisfying.

Nightingale

by Amy Lukavics

Harlequin TEEN (US & Canada)

Harlequin Teen

Teens & YA

Pub Date 25 Sep 2018

I am reviewing a copy of Nightingale through Harlequin Teen and Netgalley:

June Hardie is a seventeen year old girl whose far ahead of her time. It’s 1951 and she’s everything a young woman of that time isn’t supposed to be she’s Independent, rebellious as well as a dreams. June longs to travel go away to college and write Science Fiction stories. Her parents though are determined to make her a better woman, her Mother tries to groom her to be the perfect wife and Mother. Her Father wants her to marry his buissnesd partners son whose domineering. When she resists her parents commit her, and she discovers there are different types of prison.

Her parents commit her to a horrible institution called Butrow Place Asylum an institution with appalling conditions, terrifying staff and horrendous medical treatments. The so called institution preys on June’s darkest fears, as well as those of her fragile roommate Eleanor. The women locked away in that place with its crumbling walls and cruel staff, the ones who dare to speak out disappear. Trapped somewhere between reality and hallucinations June isn’t sure where reality ends and the nightmares began. She does know that she needs to destroy the institution before it destroys all of them.

I give Nightingale five out of five stars!

Happy Reading

Well, this book was certainly... an adventure. What started out looking like a book about a young woman suffering from Capgras delusion (a belief that someone close to you has been replaced with an identical impostor) slowly delved into weirder and weirder science fiction territory. (Or perhaps not; June is an unreliable narrator and it's possible that the science fiction elements are all the result of a broken mind. Who can say?) I don't want to give too much away in terms of plot, but rest assured that what you might expect from the blurb for this book bears little resemblance to the book itself. 

While the unexpected is certainly not in itself a reason for a negative review, the plot twists in this book simply were not well executed. It felt like there was insufficient buildup and too many questions left unanswered. The overall result was a flimsy plot with horror elements that were far from horrifying. For example, Lukavics seemed to rely too much on gore and body horror to make the reader squirm. There was a lot of "ick" factor that simply wasn't scary, with repeated mentions of worms crawling around in the brains of live people and the detailed description of a mangled corpse. 

June had some potential to be a good protagonist, and she definitely had some elements which made her sympathetic. She bristles at the rigid expectations of her gender in the 1950's, but it seems that Lukavics takes this trait too far in trying to drive the point home. June expresses irritation at one point that her mother expects her to wear clean clothes; hygiene is not a gendered issue, June. She is extremely resistant to learning to cook, and while this is something disproportionately thrust onto women, June honestly just seems disgruntled at the thought of being asked to do anything at all.

Her desire to be a writer when her family wants to turn her into a housewife was an engaging element of her character. She has no desire to marry the boy they've selected for her, for reasons which become more and more obvious as the plot moves along. I wish Lukavics had spent more time focusing on these issues rather than June's disdain at being asked to do so much as clean up after herself. Flawed protagonists are fine, but whiny protagonists are generally unbearable. June has some internal struggles going on that would have made for really intriguing character development, but they were very shallowly explored. All in all, this book felt like a first draft; there's a good story hiding under a bit of a mess. 

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own and not influenced by the publisher.

This was a book that I raced through, but looking back I am still not too sure what I thought about it. It is definitely creepy, and I spent a lot of time wondering what exactly was going on, but I never really stopped wondering. I loved the concept of the book and of a girl fighting against everything that she was raised to be, but as the book got weirder and weirder I started to lose my way with it. I really loved how creepy it was, but I was hoping for a little more from the ending.

What did I just read? It's eerie and the author certainly sets a mood but I am not sure if the execution lived up to the book description.

I don't really know what this book was. Unfortunately, I don't think the author did, either. Was it romance? Science fiction? Horror? Historical fiction? This book did about ten different things, and I feel it did not do any of the things particularly well.

The book is set in the early 1950s, and June Hardie just graduated from high school and was not ready to travel down the path her parents had set for her. When she refuses to go along with their plans at a party, something happens that causes June to get locked up in a mental institution. Can the "nurses" there be trusted, or is there more going on than anyone knows?

There were parts of this story that were interesting to read. Similar to movies along the likes of SAW, there were plenty of scenes that were grisly and hard to stomach. Overall, the entertaining parts at the end of the book did not make up for the dragging that went on throughout the book.

Eerie. Atmospheric. Deeply confusing. See review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2391330424

I was enjoying this book about a girl locked into a mental institution but was not able to complete before it was unable for me to access. I am waiting for the book (due out in September) to finish. Cannot wait!

I think I would give this a 2.5/5 rating if it was possible. Honestly this book was just bizarre and moved so fast, I could barely keep up. In the end I wasn't sure how I felt towards it.

Our story starts in 1951 with our main character June Hardie, a fresh-out-of-high-school girl that is ahead of time and is constantly bucking against her families expectations of her. Her parents are also basically forcing her to date her father's business partner's son, Robert, who is boring and the typical male of the 1950s. June is also writing a science-fiction novel about aliens who kidnap a young girl and experiment on her, towards the beginning the story is a way to possibly get into a writing retreat in New York. As the story progresses, June's novel becomes to take a life of its own and June has to work on it, almost as possessed. But June's life becomes much more complicated when her parents admit her to a mental institution after waking up one morning and June believes her parents have been replaced by look-alikes. Once at the institution she realizes that something is not quite right about the place. In what feels like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with cruel nurses and doctors, with the other girls appearing mostly normal and disappearing with alarming frequency June realizes she must try and get out of there. As her time there continues on June grows closer to her roommate, Eleanor, to the point where they enter a relationship. Eventually everything comes to head with a show down between June and the medical staff, that leads to June discovering something about herself that she had forgotten.

For the most part I enjoyed June fighting against the roles everyone in her family had set for her, like being the "perfect" housewife with cooking and looking pretty at all times and being coerced into dating the son of her father's business partner who is ignores her dreams and ambitions for his own. But the whole Eleanor thing came out of nowhere, and suddenly June is in love with her? I just felt like it was out of nowhere with not a lot of build up towards it, but kudos for a LGBT pairing back in the 1950s. (view spoiler) When June starts to remember forgotten things about herself I enjoyed seeing how it all started (view spoiler) I guess my main complaint with this story was that it turned into horror when I was expecting a thriller or suspense novel regarding a young girl in the 1950s that was simply too forward thinking for the time period.

If you enjoy horror, science-fiction, and feminist characters, then check this out. I received this from the Net Gallery as an Advanced Reader's Copy for my honest opinion and review.

I need to start off by saying that I love all of Amy's other books. Her writing is so good, and they always have a twist that throws me. This book is just different. I honestly don't know how I would even booktalk it. While reading it, I thought it would make a good, fun sci-fi movie. As a book, I really struggled with it, and in the end I was just left confused. As an adult, I questioned some of the historical stuff and the language she used. (What was on TV in that time period, reusing a needle, etc...) I could be wrong, but using the f-word that much doesn't seem right for the time period. I feel like if it had gone a few other ways, I would have really enjoyed it. Her writing is great! I wanted to finish the book and read it very fast, but I wanted more...more of the old Amy. I'm curious to see what the teen have to say when they read it.

*Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.*

3.5 stars. It would have been a definite 5, if not for the subplot of lesbian romance. That was a let-down for me.

Similar in feel to the old show The Twilight Zone, this book is WEIRD. I'm going to need time to mull over it. It's told in a confusing, eerie way: June, in the institution; June, before the institution. We're given enough loose threads to really wonder, but not enough to piece together what's really going on. For an alien-themed sci-fi/horror, I really liked it. I don't often read books like this.

The writing is cold and detached. I feel that it suits the narrative well. There is a variety of the 1950s' social issues addressed quietly in the background of the story - gender-norms, mental health treatments, abuse. It's a lot to digest, but all the same, I devoured this book.

Get ready for gory aliens, creepy nurses, and angry teenagers. Nightingale will be released October 2018.