Hands down one of the best books I've read in my life. I love Kristin Hannah and this one is at the top of my list. I honestly did not know much about the Vietnam War before this book. I learned a lot but I connected to it in ways I didn't expect. I got to talk to my parents all about their memories during that time period and I took my book to the memorial in DC to find the women that served. It was beautiful, heart wrenching, and had a larger story than just the war itself. Incredibly well-done, Hannah!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this eARC. All thoughts are honest and my own.

This book is about the women who went to Vietnam in different roles to help the troops, it was written very well.

I really felt Frankie’s fear, love and her heartbreak while reading this. Kristin Hannah did such a great job by showing the way that vets struggled with PTSD, addiction, thoughts of suicide, depression and betrayal when coming home from the war. I highly recommend reading this.

Incredibly written with a key balance between story, history, and character. Kristin Hannah cements herself as one of our time's best writers, crafting addicting stories amidst historically accurate turmoil.

I LOVED this book. It is told entirely through Frankie's perspective, which I think is the perfect narration choice. She decides to go to Vietnam as a nurse, during a time when women weren't seen as the ones who were part of the war. The first part of the book deals with her experience in Vietnam, which is harrowing. This was clearly researched so well and is the perfect blend of the horrors of life over there and the reality of making human connections in wartime.
Part two deals with Frankie coming home and hearing, on repeat, that "there were no women in Vietnam." She is suffering from PTSD before that was a thing and especially before women could be diagnosed with it. Honestly I don't know how you can read this and not just feel so badly for Frankie and everything she is going through. This is SO well written in order to get the reader to feel such empathy. I love Kristin Hannah, and this may be her best book yet.

I absolutely loved this book! Kristin Hannah is an excellent author that always keeps me interest and this book is no exception. It combines history with an excellent plot that keeps you captivated. Do yourself a favor and read this!

Set during the Vietnam War, The Women tells the story of Frankie McGrath who was inspired by the military history in her family to enlist in the Army as a nurse. Hannah does not sugarcoat, nor does she shy away from, the atrocities of war or the trauma that reverberates through the life of a soldier who makes it home and has to find their new normal post-war zone. In great detail and description, Hannah eloquently navigates the reader through life in Southern California in the 60s to Frankie’s first day in the combat hospital in the Vietnam war zone. We get a glimpse into the friendships and camaraderie the women forge in a godforsaken place and the years-long journey to coming to terms with the person the war had made her become.

A prominent theme of the book was grappling with the reverberating message that women weren’t in Vietnam. I was not alive during The Vietnam War, but after reading the Author’s notes and acknowledgments, it seems that Hannah was thorough in her research and went to great lengths to get the history right. The story she told, while fiction, was based on actual accounts from the women who served in the Vietnam hospitals. The women who served were not recognized for their service and were most often told that they weren’t there. Hannah adequately conveys being forgotten to a point where you can feel the pain of living and navigating through post-traumatic stress disorder each day, all while being denied your truth.

I don’t want to give the ending away, but I will say that the ending felt redemptive for Frankie, who finally found a way to put purpose to her pain.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This book was absolutely fantastic. I did not know much about the women in the Army during Vietnam and I found this very fascinating. Kristin Hannah's writing is absolutely beautiful. Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

This is a classic Kristin Hannah with amazing research and writing.

I haven’t read a KH book I haven’t fell in love with.

What the HELL? There is no other way to start this review. I’ve never been so angry at a book.

How could a nation ignore the fact women were over in Vietnam? Just because they weren’t in the front lines did not mean they didn’t serve. It didn’t mean that they didn’t experience everything a front line soldier experienced. They saw such horrific injuries to all walks of life. They had to enlist in one of the armed forces therefore they WERE veterans!

France’s parents were horrible. Especially when she returned home. To come home to angry and disrespectful civilians and then experience from your own parents.

Veteran help is something I strongly support. My own dad hated the VA and I now understand more his reasoning. I suspected he had PTSD from Korea. No wonder so many of our veterans suffer from so many addictions. They helped themselves in ways they could. Was it the best? No, but you do what you have to to get through the day.

We as a nation still need to do better for our veterans that have seen active combat. They served our country and fought for us. Military PTSD is real. We should not shame them for it. We weren’t there. They were.

Read this book then do your own research if you don’t believe we failed an entire generation of veterans.

Hannah’s best book yet. 😭

This is an automatic read / buy author for me, and this novel was her most powerful. It’s not often that a book brings me to tears, much less makes me sob, but this story was successful in both.

Highly recommend this novel (and author).

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC - this book is available everywhere, go grab it.

I read this so long ago. And I've been sitting on writing a review because I have such conflicted feelings about it. I think it was an incredibly powerful book, and that the topics are important. But it was also incredibly challenging to read. I've recommended it to many people in conversation, while I have refrained from recommending to others due to the content.
Worth the read? For sure. But know what you're getting into.

Loved it! Another knockout book, how does she do it? Was fully immersed in the story and sad to have it end. Have recommended it to so many fellow readers.

I haven't read many books by Kristin Hannah, but are ALL of them such tearjerkers? I started this one via audiobook and ended up crying before I even got 45 minutes into. So I played it safe and just read the rest via the ebook so I didn't become a blubbering mess during my commute.

This book was so heart-wrenching. I don't even have the capability to fully say how this book made me feel. I loved getting the perspective of a woman's experience in-country during the Vietnam War. As someone from a military family, it is hard reading about what people had to go through while they were there, even if it is a "historically fictionalized" account.

When Frankie's brother Finley is picked to go to Vietnam as a Naval Officer, she knows he will end up being on her parent's "hero wall." At Finley's going away party, one of his friends tells Frankie that "women can be heroes too." However, once Frankie returns home and has to fight the external and internal demons of war, she finds out just how hard it is to be seen as a "hero" to many people, including her own family.

Reading Frankie's story and what made her feel compelled to enlist as a nurse with the US Army and journeying through her life pre-, during, and post-war was something that will stick with me for a long, LONG time.

An absolute must read. I thoroughly enjoyed this and recommended it to my mom, who lived through this era, and all of my book loving friends. I really enjoyed the depth of detail that Kristin Hannah went into in the two parts of the book. It was a topic that I had never given much thought to, and this character and story really opened my eyes to women’s experiences in war and post war life.

This book was amazing. Kristin Hannah is so good at story telling and representing the era she is in.

I really appreciated how this book tackled the Vietnam experience from the perspective of the nurses who served in country. It was a great companion to so many books that I have read that focused on the soldiers' experience. My one pet peeve was the way every man instantly fell in love with the main character, Frankie. It was clear from the details provided in the story that Kristin Hannah thoroughly researches her historical fiction.

Wow—The Women hit me hard in all the best ways. Kristin Hannah has this gift for weaving emotional, deeply human stories, and this one might be her most powerful yet. It follows Frances “Frankie” McGrath, a young nurse who volunteers to serve in Vietnam and ends up facing not only the horrors of war but also the painful erasure of women’s roles in it.

Hannah doesn't sugarcoat anything—the trauma, the loss, the anger—it’s all there. But at the same time, she gives us hope, resilience, and the deep bonds women form in impossible situations. It's heartbreaking, but also empowering.

If you're into historical fiction that actually teaches you something while pulling on every emotion you've got, this one’s worth the read. Just have tissues nearby.

4.5 stars

Another emotional rollercoaster from Kristin Hannah. The amount of research that had to have gone into this book is incredible - though fiction, I learned so much about the Vietnam war. Frankie was an incredible main character, and her journey was traumatic and powerful and inspiring. I loved how heavy the romance was, however didn't completely love the direction all relationships went in. I found myself wishing certain characters were better than they turned out to be, but I understand this is what worked best for the story. Overall an incredible book. I loved it!

Kristin Hannah is an incredibly consistent writer. I know that whatever I pick up by her, I will adore. I felt completely immersed in this novel — I learned so much about the Vietnam war and the nurses who were on the ground helping during combat. I felt for the main character, Frankie. She couldn’t catch a break at times but I felt completely invested in her story. I would highly recommend to anyone who loves this author or historical fiction in general.

One of the best books I have read in a long time. Kristin Hannah does it again. This book had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Despite how long it is, I FLEW through it. It definitely gave a different perspective of the Vietnam War but I was hooked. Loved it.