First published in the German newspaper Der Spiegel and then translated and released each day on the site ISOLARII, War Diary is written by Yevgenia Belorusets during the first forty-one days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I found an ARC of this book while working with Reader Services at my library and though I’ve been trying to read more nonfiction, I still find it a bit hard to get into. I flipped to the preface of this small book, read it, and immediately loved Yevegenia Belorusets’ voice and wanted to continue reading it. I finished this in a day. I was so fascinated by how Belorusets was describing what had happened in her hometown of Kyiv, Ukraine.

She brought up a lot of stuff I would have never thought of about a war in modern time with the internet. Such as the fact that the app that would alert them to places that have been striked won’t update things right away in case the wrong area or building was shelled and they would come back to attempt it again. Or how you have to be careful about posting videos or photos on social media, because even the slightest glimpse of something could alert the enemy to locations.

This also alerted me to how crazy it is to how well humans adapt and continue living, even in a warzone. Belorusets talks about grocery shopping and cafes opening back up once it was more “normal”.

Overall, this was an informative, personal collection of entries about the beginning days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and I can see this becoming something used in the classroom as study of these events happening. ( )