So Kristin Hannah is an absolute heavyweight—maybe *the* heavyweight—of modern historical fiction writing. The books of hers I've read I've loved (shoutout to "The Nightingale" over on my favorites shelf), and seeing the rave reviews flood in for this one I knew I was in for another treat.

Yet somehow... I found myself so bored by "The Women"??? What happened?

If I'm being honest, even before I cracked the spine I had some hatred for the title. It's so nondescript and empty, and now that I'm on the other side of the cover I think that it's unfortunately a weirdly appropriate representation of the novel itself.

Our protagonist Frankie is really really flat and surprisingly unsympathetic. I know that's an unpopular opinion, but whatever magic Hannah typically imbues into her heroines is blatantly absent here. I think that this in part had to do with the redundancy in both her situation and her reactions to her surroundings. Even though she went through absolute hell in Vietnam and we surely saw that, I don't actually think we *felt* it. EVEN THOUGH she experienced seriously severe PTSD after her return home, I somehow still didn't FEEEEEEL her pain. Listen I'm not an author and I'm not sure what piece of the puzzle was missing... but something was off. Chapter after chapter, the thoughts in her head didn't really evolve much at all beyond the shock of her initial arrival in Vietnam. Give us fewer thoughts or DIFFERENT thoughts, but so much of the same starts to get really tedious when we don't ever leave Frankie's head.

Because though the title refers to the number of women who served in Vietnam without recognition, I would've loved to actually dig more into the lives and even firsthand perspectives of the other main women in the book, Ethel and Barb. They were consistently much more compelling than Frankie, and I think it's possible that switching perspectives to see how all of them were affected in different (and similar?) ways could have made this book much stronger. Alas, we saw them basically swoop in to save Frankie over and over, and I was frustrated by that reduction in their roles. Any attempt to flesh them out after they all left Vietnam felt half-hearted at best.

And I really don't even want to talk about the men... because of course there was romance and romance is great, but the love triangle(s) and whatever other shapes the relationships took on were just sooo overdramatic and unrealistic.

TWO of Frankie's male love interests are presumed dead and then resurrected, but we somehow don't get a revival for her brother?! I'm sorry to say that after Rye's return, I actually rolled my eyes when the definitely-dead Jamie also reappeared at the end to close the romantic loop. I think I would've respected Hannah more if she hadn't tied up the ending so neatly. It's not that Frankie didn't deserve a happy ending, but I think I'd argue she'd already found one in the work she was doing to help other women and didn't need ~the man~ to make her whole.

I will say that one of my favorite things about the book was learning a bit more about the realities of the Vietnam War, a conflict that is kind of glossed over in our history classes in my opinion. Though of course this is fiction, I did think the in-country scenes were really valuable in showcasing the horror of war (and of this war in particular). Hannah also really effectively highlighted the tension between American political rhetoric and the real human suffering that it can cause, especially when Frankie returned home and tried to reconcile her experience with the perspective of her peers and her parents.

So not all the Kirstin Hannah magic is lost, but I found "The Women" to be lacking the normal emotional gut-punch that she typically is able to deliver—prioritizing shallow and unrealistic romance over the more meaty potential storylines involving women other than Frankie really weakened this one. If you're looking for a standout Kristin Hannah novel, you're better off looking elsewhere.