Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First things first: I'm French and have majored in contemporary history. I love historical fiction and was looking forward a good read. Bottom line, I couldn't bring myself to finish this book, which is one of the worst I've read on the subject. Ever. I really don't get how it hasn't been slammed by readers and critics. The major issue are the multiple anachronism, which completely undermine the whole book. For the sake of a good laugh, a couple of examples: - upon hearing that their respective husbands have been drafted, Vianne, the main character and her friend, Rachel, share their fears and sadness. All goes well, until Rachel jokes that her husband wasn't very good at changing nappies anyway. REALLY? In rural France? In 1939? Completely out of historical and social context, a woman at that time couldn't even have thought such a thought, as for a man going anywhere near nappies, no comment... - more of the same, when Vianne's younger sister, Isabelle, fresh out of her pension and 19 years old, jumps into her boyfriend car and drives away. Again, as if! An extremely limited number of women had their driving license in 1939, and they certainly weren't so young and still in school. It would have been so uncommon that any writer broaching the subject would have had to take some length to explain it. And that was only in the first 45 pages... What is bothering isn't so much that details aren't right, it's that they're only the tip of the iceberg: the whole book doesn't sound 1930's, the historical facts are here but the atmosphere, the characters are way too modern. People in France 75 years ago certainly didn't sound or act like in a 2015 TV series. It is really hard to take seriously a book which feels as if only the historical facts have been researched and the rest purely left to the author's imagination. Hard not to get annoyed too as it just feels lazy. If you compare it to let's say All the light we cannot see, by A. Doerr, when you read his book, you really find yourself in France, it really feels like 75 years ago and the characters sounds just perfect. The Nightingale is like some of these B movies, where the set is Ancient Rome and the actors so obviously very modern Californians! Very unpleasant sense of discrepancy.