I absolutely hated this extremely popular book

Prepared to piss off a few people with this one

Let me preface this by saying: Reading is a deeply personal endeavor and I never want to yuck another person’s yum. Everyone should read whatever they damn well please. For that reason, I rarely dedicate so much energy and space to a negative review.

But this must be said! I have to spare others from hundreds of pages of dull, repetitive drivel.

The first book I read in 2026 could not have been more of a let down. I don’t rely on Goodreads as Gospel by any means, but 1.5 million reviews with an average 4.6 rating surely means something, doesn’t it? WRONG.

I’m talking about the extremely hyped, wildly popular new Kristin Hannah: The Women, a novel about female nurses in the Vietnam War. I am deeply angry at this book. I turned the last page so aggressively I woke my baby up. My husband says he can’t recall the last time I was this mad.

I think, if you were an alien dropped to earth who has never read a novel before, you might find this a good place to start. Alternatively, if you have made it through your entire adult life never having heard anything at all about the Vietnam war, this might (again, might!) be interesting to you.

These are 400+ pages of the most lukewarm takes about Vietnam, heroism, and feminism you could possibly imagine. Had the author invented all of these concepts out of thin air, there might be something positive to be said. But she manages to bring not one unique thought about any of these things to the entire book. Real lines from this book include: “Women can be heroes,” and “The men serve. The men.”

For the love of all that is holy, spare us. You will be beaten over the head with these absolutely abysmal takes for hundreds and hundreds of pages. You will become your very own prisoner of war to these aggressively room temperature words. On top of some of the weakest, corniest prose I’ve ever read, a small child could easily deduce where this book is going.

Do yourself a favor and skip this one.

Disagree? I’m all ears. Let’s fight about it!