Death of a Flying Nightingale by Laura Jensen Walker

Death of a Flying Nightingale
by Laura Jensen Walker

ISBN-13: 9781685125592
paperback: 284 pages
Released: Sept. 10, 2024


Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from NetGalley:
Three very different young women serve as air ambulance nurses bravely flying into WWII combat zones risking their lives to evacuate the wounded. Irish Maeve joined the RAF after her fiancé was killed; streetwise Etta fled London’s slums in search of a better life, and farm girl Betty enlisted to prevent the wounded from dying like her brother. Newspapers have given these women a romantic nickname: “The Flying Nightingales.” Not that there’s anything romantic about what they do. The horrific injuries they encounter on a daily basis take their toll.

When one of the Nightingales is found dead, they wonder: Was it an accident? Suicide? After another nursing orderly dies mysteriously, they think: Someone’s killing Nightingales. The friends grapple with their loss all while keeping a stiff upper lip and continuing to care for casualties as they’re being strafed by the Luftwaffe.


My Review:
Death of a Flying Nightingale is a romance set in 1944-1945 in England. There was no mystery, just people dying. A pregnant nursing orderly from a nearby base was murdered, but the main characters quickly forgot about her. Another nursing orderly was found dead, apparently suicide. But was it? They soon stopped questioning it but hid that it might have been a suicide to make it easier on her parents. Then another nursing orderly's found clearly murdered. They left the investigation to the military police. Later, someone spontaneously confessed. So, not a mystery.

Most of the story was about the growing romances between Maeve and a doctor, Etta and a nurse, and Betty with one of her patients. Betty's romance was mostly through letters, but many of the women in the story were having sexual relationships outside of marriage. It didn't seem very realistic that so few were shocked by or disapproved of the barely-hidden sexual encounters going on, including Etta ending up in a lesbian relationship and a reoccurring male character in a homosexual relationship.

There were scenes describing the types of situations that a nursing orderly dealt with. While interesting, I never felt immersed in the story nor was I left feeling like these people might have really existed. Which is a little ironic since some of these scenes were based off of a real person's experiences as a 'Flying Nightingale.' There were no sex scenes. There was a fair amount of bad language.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.