REBECCA LANGHAM
  • Home
  • Rebecca Langham
    • Bio
    • SERIES: The Outsider Project
    • Novellas
    • Interviews
    • Contact
  • KARA RIPLEY
    • About Kara
    • Romance Stories
  • ceLEStial book reviews

'Nightingale' by Andrea Bramhall

30/10/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
​​When Charlie Porter meets Hazaar Alim her first year of university, she’s instantly smitten. Hazaar has it all: beauty, talent, and brains. What she doesn’t realize is that Hazaar’s future has already been decided, and Charlie has no place in it.

Hazaar desperately wants to break with her traditions and stay with Charlie, but when forced to choose, she chooses her family over love. When she realizes the choice she made is the worst one possible, it’s too late.

Years later, while working in Pakistan as a diplomat and negotiator, Charlie receives a phone call from a woman who says her British sister-in-law is to be killed for the family’s honor and asks if someone can save her.

Charlie and Hazaar are on a collision course with destiny. If they make it out alive, can they believe in their love once again? (Goodreads)

RATING: 5 Stars

When this book was recommended to me by a friend of mine, she said that the novel had stayed with her for days upon finishing it. I can understand why. 

This novel is ambitious in its thematic scope. It explores oft misrepresented elements of Islam, the interconnected and complex nature of religious zealotry and cultural tradition, as well as the oxymoron that is a family that somehow manages to both love and oppress. The author does an excellent job of handling all of these issues. I was particularly impressed by the respectful and well-researched management of Islam. As someone who teaches Studies of Religion to senior school students (though I myself am not religious - so I can't claim to be an expert), I found the discussions between characters that delved into the issue to be extremely well managed. This is the sort of writing I'd like to see more of. The kind that challenges us to think, to feel, to be.

It's also refreshing to read a novel that has a strong element of cultural diversity - without suggesting that everyone within a religious or cultural setting expresses their beliefs in the same ways.  People in Pakistan are a mix of outright altruistic and beautiful (Amira!) and shockingly brutal. And as Charlie points out to Kenzi, it's the same everywhere, though the name given to violence in one place may be different to the name it is given in another. 

The dual timeline in the novel did its job. Switching between 'The North of England - Then' and 'Pakistan - Now', built a great deal of suspense. It drove me crazy sometimes, because I'd want to know what happens next in the other time line. That said, ideas and experiences are unveiled as they should be for the sake of masterful storytelling. 

I only found a couple of aspects that I didn't enjoy overall, and these didn't reduce my ***** rating of the novel.  Personally (and really - this is about reader preference), I didn't find the graphic sex scenes to be in keeping with the tone of the book. Charlie and Hazaar's relationship needed to be firmly explored before the action of the second half of the novel unfolds, yet the almost reverent atmosphere of the entire story made those scenes feel out-of-place to me.  

I'd like to point out the following to readers just in case these factors may make you uncomfortable. The novel includes scenes of torture that are confronting, as torture always would be. The scenes do an amazing job of enhancing the characterisation though, and don't seem to be there just for the sake of "shock value," which helped me deal with them as best as I could. The novel definitely elicited a powerful emotional response from me - that's for sure.  As a parent, I really struggled with the last few chapters. I won't mention anything that'll spoil the story too much, but just be aware that if you have raised kids, you may be like me and feel a bit sick during a couple of the chapters. 

Nightingale is a fantastic, intense, and poignant novel that is well worth reading. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    ABOUT C.B.

    CURRENTLY ON HIATUS FOR UNIVERSITY STUDY AND WORK. 

    Book reviews, Author Q&As and more as shared by an Australian lesbian. My core interests lie in genre fiction: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror etc.
    ​
    My aim is to help provide more exposure to those books that  may not fit neatly into the usual "lesfic" boxes (EG: pansexual women who engage with different aspects of their sexuality, non-binary characters, books with very little romance etc.) or books that don't conform to the most popular tropes that tend to dominate the LGBTIQ+ publishing world.

    That said, I'll put up pretty much any review that I'd like to share. Most will have some sort of rainbow content, but not all. I am a reader who likes to talk about books -- that's really what this little corner of the web is for, to talk about books.

    ​Email: celestialbooks [AT] rebeccalangham.com.au


    Archives

    August 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    January 2017
    July 2016

    Categories

    All
    1. # Submit A Book
    Ace Rep
    Action/Adventure
    Anime & Manga
    Anthologies
    Australian Author
    Author Q&A
    BDSM
    Beneath The Surface
    Bisexual
    Bisexual F/F
    Bisexual M/F
    Bisexual M/M
    Blog Post
    Book Review
    Book Trailer
    Book Updates
    Comic Books/Graphic Novels
    Contemporary Fiction
    Cops
    Crime Fiction
    Dystopian
    Fade To Black
    Fairy Tales
    Fantasy
    F/F/F
    Five Stars
    Gender Neutral
    Give Away
    Guest Blog
    Historical Fiction
    Horror Novels
    Intersex Characters
    Journalists
    Kara Ripley
    Lesbian Sci Fi
    Literary Fiction
    Love Triangle
    M/M/F
    M/M Fiction
    MPREG
    Mystery
    Mythology
    New Release
    NineStar Press
    Non Binary
    Non-fiction
    No Pairing
    Pansexual
    Paranormal
    Pirates
    Polyamorous
    Post-Apocalyptic
    Release Day Blitz
    Religious Themes
    Reviews By Kaelan
    Reviews By L.A.
    Reviews By Rebecca
    Romance Novels
    Science Fiction
    Self-Published
    Space Opera
    Speculative Fiction
    Spy Stories
    Superheroes
    Third Gender
    Thriller
    Time Travel
    Trans Rep
    Urban Fantasy
    Vampires
    Western
    Wolves
    Writing
    Young Adult
    Zombies

    RSS Feed

    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.