My current read is LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR, an in depth, inside look at the war in Ukraine from a woman that was “boots on the ground” through much of it.

Amelina documents stories from extraordinary women that join the resistance. Evgenia was a lawyer turned soldier, Oleksandra, who documented thousands of war crimes and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Yulia, a librarian who helped uncover the abduction and murder of a children’s book author.

Everyone knew she was documenting the war- photographs of school ruins, testimonies, eyewitness to atrocities. She began writing what would become this book.

On June 27th, 2023 she was having some dinner with a few other writers when a Russian cruise missile hit the restaurant, causing her serious head injuries, which she succumbed to on July 1st at the age of 37.

This account chronicles the ravages of war- the cost of resistance- including death.

This is one of those nonfiction pieces that despite mood or otherwise, it should be read. We should know. We should honor women like Victoria Amelina.

Happy Posthumous Pub Day to Victoria Amelina. Thank you for sharing this with the world!

It is painful, tragic, sad and upsetting to come to this book knowing that its young (37), brave, fierce, talented author is no longer alive. Amelina was killed in Ukraine when she was out having pizza with other writers. Just knowing this, brings all of the horrors of the Ukraine war to light. So many innocent people have been caught up in events that did not have to be.

Left behind is this work which will, I think, become a classic. It looks at war’s impact on women and the resistance that they wage. It is beautifully written and unfinished for reasons that the reader knows. This greatly adds to its impact.

This is not an easy book to read but it needs to be read. I recommend it most highly.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this title. All opinions are my own.

This book was unlike any other I've read. Victoria's strength and dedication is admirable. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about the events in Ukraine.

Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary
Victoria Amelina
foreword by Margaret Atwood
St. Martin’s Press, 2025

I am endlessly thankful that editors proceeded with the publication of “Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary” despite the two-thirds complete manuscript at the time of Victoria Amelina’s death by airstrike in Ukraine in July 2023.

My previous lack of awareness of her writing prowess, combined with Amelina’s training as a war researcher with Truth Hounds, made this book all the more enticing. A heartrending read on the horrors of war, especially when directed at children, or when rape is used as a weapon.

Amelina’s ability to home in on the details of war research, probably from her years as a novelist and children’s book author, directs the reader’s eye to the idiosyncrasies of contemporary warfare: holes blown in kindergarten classroom ceilings and cartoon-covered walls, for example.

Thank you to the friends and family of Victoria Amelina, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for the eARC.

An interesting book... definitely sad yet the women are so relatable. Read if you are interested in the Ukraine War and what ordinary people have had to live with. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC. #sponsored

The urgency of this posthumous memoir was underscored last week when U.S. Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, said at a NATO meeting in Brussels that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is “an unrealistic objective” and an “illusionary goal” in the peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia that President Trump wants to accomplish.

Victoria Amelina was a well-known novelist and the director of a literary festival in the Donetsk region who turned to war reporting, interviewing witnesses and survivors for the Ukrainian organization Truth Hounds. She and her son had been vacationing in Egypt when the full-scale Russian -Ukrainian war began on February 23, 2022. She left her son in Poland and returned to her apartment in Lviv, which she later turned into a shelter for the displaced. She had promised her son that she would return to Poland soon, but she admits “I lied to my child, and I will keep lying; war is a source of bad habits.” Her reaction to the war, when she returned to Ukraine, was, oddly, one of relief. She explains, “I’m not the only writer who has met the beginning of an apocalyptic war with something other than despair or anger. * * * The season of phantasmal peace is over.”

Amelina captures in brief vignettes Ukrainian citizens, predominately from the arts, who were impacted by the Russian occupation. She describes how the downing of a single Russian helicopter shattered for Ukrainians “the entire myth of Russian Invisibility.” She speaks with a woman, Iryna, about the horrendous days she had spent in Russian captivity in 2014, a victim of gender-based violence. A photo of Iryna had appeared in the New York Times prompting her miraculous release; however, despite her husband’s efforts to purchase her safety in Kyiv, “Iryna is waiting for the attack on her new home, new garden, and new life. She ran away, but Russia is catching up.” Amelina interviews a museum director who worked with her staff and defense soldiers to load the manuscripts, letters and first editions of the Ukrainian writers of the twentieth century on a train heading west, and a librarian who felt duty-bound to keep the library open as it served as “a help center for the elderly, a safe space for women, and a club for children.” She reports on a renowned artist of the sixties who dies in her own home of hunger, an owner of a beauty parlor who, at sixty-years-old, worked as a combat paramedic, a lawyer who defends against grave human rights violations, such as the transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia, and an elderly man who lost his animals to Russian offenders and, with the animals, went his sense of purpose in life. Amidst these horrors, she also reports on the efforts of a group of people to save a beetle stuck on a crowded train platform in Kharkiv, and “how much we all laugh during this horrible war. We may not do it that much in front of the foreign reporters, who mostly expect to see Ukrainian women’s despair or heroism, The truth is, sometimes, tried or crying or of being unable to cry, we laugh like crazy as if proving that here we are, Ukrainians, still alive.”

Amelina was killed by Russian missiles at a Kramatorsk restaurant in the summer of 2023, and she had not completed her book at the time of her death. Her editors have heavily footnoted the book to give the reader context and have meticulously noted where they have tinkered with incomplete text. The inclusion of Amelina’s unedited notes underline the tragedy of her death in a Russian missile strike. This is a beautifully rendered compilation with writing that is urgent, messy and personal. Thank you St. Martin’s Press and Net Galley for an advance copy of this important book.

Looking at Women Looking at War by Victoria Amelina was such a heart-wrenching read.
A devastating and tough memoir to read.
But the storytelling was just amazing.
A powerful and devastating super of what is happening in Ukraine.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in the country’s literary scene, and parenting her son. Then she became a war crimes researcher and the chronicler of extraordinary women like herself who joined the resistance. These heroines include Evgenia, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, Oleksandra, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and Yulia, a librarian who helped uncover the abduction and murder of a children’s book author. Everyone in Ukraine knew that Amelina was documenting the war. She photographed the ruins of schools and cultural centers; she recorded the testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses to atrocities. And she slowly turned back into a storyteller, writing what would become this book. On the evening of June 27th, 2023, Amelina and three international writers stopped for dinner in the embattled Donetsk region. When a Russian cruise missile hit the restaurant, Amelina suffered grievous head injuries, and lost consciousness. She died on July 1st. She was thirty-seven. She left behind an incredible account of the ravages of war and the cost of resistance. Honest, intimate, and wry, this book will be celebrated as a classic.

This was a difficult book to read for me, but a necessary one as I wanted to understand the Ukraine's war with Russia. The author left portions of the book with just fragments of thoughts but never got the chance to flesh them out so they were inserted in the book as she left them. She wrote enough of the book, though, to understand the devastation of war and its effect on the people of Ukraine. She also was able to describe the brave women who tried to document it by risking their lives to travel the country and talk to the people. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for ofering this book so people of the world could better understand the war and the people involved.

Perhaps the most important book you will read all year.

Slated to be released on February 18, a mere six days before the three-year anniversary of Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and in the middle of peace talks that Ukraine is not part of, „Looking at Women Looking at War“ is one woman’s timely and urgent yet incredibly poetic legacy, a collection of stories of Ukrainian women documenting war crimes.

The author, Ukrainian novelist, poet, and literary festival founder turned war crimes researcher Victoria Amelina (1986-2023), was killed by a Russian missile strike against a civilian target, eventually succumbing to her injuries on July 1, 2023. At the time of her death, only 60 percent of this book - her only work of non-fiction, written in English to reach the widest possible audience - was finished. A team of editors did a marvelous job of compiling different drafts of Victoria‘s manuscript into one harrowing account of war while not shying away from leaving numerous of its later chapters empty, sentences and whole accounts unfinished, thoughts not verbalized - some of the book only a fragment, unfinished, much like the life of its author.

What remains is a unique and harrowing collection of diary entries, stories derived from countless interviews and Victoria Amelina‘s own investigations and experiences, research reports, interviews, poetry, and, above all, the author‘s poetic prose that has the reader looking at the these women up close and through them gaining an intimate view of the war while always being keenly aware of the tragic loss of this incredibly talented author.

„Looking at Women Looking at War“ is unflinching in its honesty of the brutalities of war, yet never without hope or determination. Perhaps one of the most important books you will read this year.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin‘s Press for the honor of reading Victoria Amelina‘s war and justice diary before its release on February 18, 2025. All opinions are my own.

Victoria Amelina’s Looking at Women Looking at War is a haunting and powerful testament to resilience, loss, and the unbreakable spirit of those who document war. Through her vivid storytelling, Amelina introduces us to women who turned grief into action—lawyers, librarians, and journalists who risked everything to ensure the truth was recorded.

The book’s strength lies in its deeply personal narrative, intertwining Amelina’s own journey with those of the women she honors. Her writing is both intimate and unflinching, a blend of reportage and reflection that ensures these stories will not be forgotten.

Tragically, Amelina’s own life was cut short by the very war she documented, making this book even more poignant. While at times the structure feels fragmented, the weight of its message is undeniable. A must-read for those seeking to understand not just war, but the courage of those who bear witness.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for access to this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

It was the title that seduced me to hit the request button. More than likely, it will be the picture of the woman on the front cover and what was written on the pages that will stick with me forever.

Ukraine, 2022 is marked by war with Russia, a war that has been ongoing since 2014 and the lives of Victoria Amelina, her family, her neighbours and all of her country are forever changed. It isn't the first time Ukraine has found itself invaded by its giant of a neighbour. Time and time again, the book refers to the many offences Ukraine has suffered in its history. Once a children's writer, Victoria Amelina feels she needs a new purpose and will become a war crimes journalist. She introduces us to many of the women who have forever been changed by this conflict. Amelina herself died tragically while out in the field, but her editors felt that her unfinished manuscript needed to be sent out to the world.

Frankly, I am glad that they did. Because it is the eyewitness accounts of women who were mothers, daughters, artists, etc, that we need to remember. As is mentioned in the book, "Why do we say more the names of the perpetrators than the people they have terrorized? " These heroines include Evgenia, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, Oleksandra, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and Yulia, a librarian who helped uncover the abduction and murder of a children’s book author.

About the Author
On the evening of June 27th, 2023, Amelina and three international writers stopped for dinner in the embattled Donetsk region. When a Russian cruise missile hit the restaurant, Amelina suffered grievous head injuries and lost consciousness. She died on July 1st. She was thirty-seven.



Expected Publication Date 18/02/25
Goodreads Review Date 16/02/25

What will be left after us when we are gone? And I mean not the immaterial legacy, not the lasting impact on others, but the lived mess of our everyday lives, which made sense to us in its dynamism, but once the human organizing principle is gone, becomes just that - a bunch of stray objects and notes. This is probably familiar to anyone who has had to sort through the belongings of a deceased relative.
I have heard from many women in Ukraine that they have started to put on nicer underwear when they go to sleep. Because if there's shelling at night and the building collapses on them, they don't want to be in old underwear with holes in it when the emergency services find their cold bodies days later.
When I went back to Ukraine to do some research for the first time since the full-scale invasion, I texted a professor at my US university, who had become a good friend during my Ph.D., and got her to promise that she would make sure my manuscript was published if anything happened to me.

The book is not about any of these things, but these are all things I couldn't get out of my head while reading it. By its very form - and this would be discussed as a wonderful literary device if it were done in a fictional book - but in this case, completely unintentionally, the book is an epitome of the fragility and precariousness of human life in war.

Victoria Amelina was a prominent Ukrainian writer who published for both adults and children. With russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she realized that the old ways of being a useful member of society were now worth nothing - and after first joining the volunteer effort in other capacities, she trained as a war crimes investigator and participated in missions to recently liberated regions to document war crimes committed there during the occupation. And then she decided to write a book about all these experiences - part diary, part reportage, part memoir, focusing on her own experience as a war crimes investigator, but also highlighting the stories of other women.

This book is the best attempt to reconstruct Victoria's plan based on the last working draft that existed when she was killed by a russian missile in 2023.

It's got it all: fully fleshed out chapters; brief notes from interviews; sections identified only by what they were supposed to be about; excerpts from mission reports; quotes from historical sources she pulled to show some parallels with current events; sections that adhered to a previous organizing principle for the book that was superseded by the current structure. As I said, if we saw this in a fiction book, we would applaud it as a clever postmodern device. Instead, this is just a snippet of a work-in-progress that tragically lost its source of meaning, its human creator, halfway through.

One of the central themes of the book is how Victoria found the diary of Volodymyr Vakulenko, a children's author who was killed when his village was occupied, but who managed to hide his diary, which describes the first month of the full-scale invasion, by burying it in his garden. Amelina dug it out with her hands, then took it to a museum and presented it to the public when it was published. So you can't help but get the feeling of "mise-en-abyme" as you read it: the story of a diary that was abruptly cut short because its author's life was taken by the aggressor and reconstructed for public view by others appears in another diary that... well, had exactly the same fate.

I highly recommend this title. If you don't feel like reading into notes that only made sense to the person who jotted them down, I strongly recommend reading at least the completed sections (which is all of Part 1 and many chapters throughout the book) and flipping through the rest. Victoria has done a great job of making the subject accessible to an international audience, and where she didn't have enough time, the editors have provided explanations in the footnotes.

Publication date February 18, 2025.

I am grateful to St. Martin's Press for providing me with an eARC through NetGalley ahead of the publication. The opinion above is my own.

Finished Reading

Pre-Read notes

I was attracted to the title of this one. After reading some of the front material, I'm looking forward to the untraditional form and the translation challenge this manuscript represents. I have very mixed feelings about posthumous publishing. On one hand, it makes sense to honor the incomplete work of a writer's oeuvre at the time of their death. At the same time, plumbing an author's rejects for publishing opportunities gets morally murky. Since this is the first of these, I expect to enjoy it quite a lot.

Final Review

“Guys, you’re packed as if . . . as if you were going to war!” I am not sure whether her laugh was hysterical or ironic. Perhaps it was both. I laughed too. p54

Review summary and recommendations

Victoria Amelina died while reporting on the war in Ukraine. Stories told while the writer dies often carry significant social and political weight. In a just world, this book would be perceived as too heavy to carry, but we'd carry it anyway. I hope it gets the attention it deserves. Needs, even.

I recommend listening to this one for readers who have trouble with violent material but want to read this courageous journalist's final words about war. It gives just a bit of cushion between reader and material.

I also recommend this book to readers who enjoy reading about politics and policies, survival stories, or those who would find value in the bleak look at life during wartime.

I needed some time to understand how I felt. There was no time for that. p161

Reading Notes

Three (or more) things I loved:

1. Many religions have a figure that we may call the Recording Angel— the spirit whose job it is to write down the good and bad deeds of humans. These records are then used by a deity to achieve redress— to balance the scales that the goddess Justice is so often shown as carrying. War crimes are by definition bad deeds. p4 I think Margaret Atwood's forward reveals a lot about the origins of this manuscript. It also addresses the necessity of completing Amelina's final project.

2. A powerful opening to the essential book: I have just bought my first gun in downtown Lviv. I’ve heard that everyone is capable of killing, and those who say they aren’t just haven’t met the right person yet. An armed stranger entering my country might just be the “right person.”

3. This narrative is naturally tense and riveting. Amelina's narrative voice is fraught with anxiety. I went through the first 40 pages without breathing.

4.“He said, choose me or the dress,” she laughs, remembering. Vira chose her freedom and the dress. She loves her dresses, but she couldn’t evacuate them in March either. She became the girl in jeans and a red sweater, trying to survive, no Kapuściński. p154 The author writes so intuitively about a truly uncanny experience-- shedding one's identity in layers while running from war.

5. It is through elegant imagery that Amelina shows the reader the absolute destruction that is war. And wouldn’t that be wonderful, to meet in Paris and not talk to her about the thirty-seven wars and three genocides she has seen, but only talk about art and beauty? I try to imagine this happy time while walking the Paris streets with Oleksandra. p238

6. Amelina writes extensively about how war destroys personal identity and local culture. For some reason, this makes me most sad. That even the survivors of war die on the inside.


Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. The story Amelina tells about why she doesn't panic when she hears explosions in a war zone is completely wild!

2. This is a harrowing account. TW war, war crimes, SA, torture. “He has no major visible injuries, so he can be sent back into battle,” she cries on the phone. “His fingers are broken, so how will he shoot? How will he dig quickly enough?” I know what she means. Everyone who has been to the front line or has friends there knows the main rule for survival: if you want to live, dig. p254 The last 20-30 pages before the epilogue are especially intense.

3. The Russian war has created a minefield of 250,000 i square kilometers in Ukraine; demining could take decades. p270 This just blows my mind.

Rating: 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡 /5 dangers of war
Recommend? yes!
Finished: Feb 14 '25
Format: digital arc, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
🪦 posthumous publications
👨‍💻 journalism
👨‍🔬 activism
📓 nonfiction
🩸 wartime stories

Thank you to the author Victoria Amelina, publishers St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an accessible advance digital copy of LOOKING AT WOMEN LOOKING AT WAR. All views are mine.
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What a treat this book is. Sad, heartbreaking, infuriating, yes but at the same time a gem.

As truthful, real, raw, honest as it can get. The account of the devastation Ukraine has suffered, and continues suffering from the war, the full-scale invasion which started almost three years ago. I command Victoria and all the other women she talks about in her book, whom like her, left their homes, children, professions, to help other people during the war, in any way they could, some of them even enlisting in the army, to fight in the front lines.

A must read, definitely.

Thank you, St. Martin's Press and NetGalley, for the free physical advanced copy, in exchange for an honest review.

Living in the U.S., I have never had the experience of being in a war zone. I cannot even imagine what it must be like. Reading this book helped me gain some perspective on what it is like to be in Ukraine war activities having started already in 2014. So many people have lost everything.

I was particularly impacted by her experience of crossing a street when under an air raid alert. Acknowledging that she and those she was with had a greater chance of being killed by missile than a car, they nonetheless walked back to the crosswalk and waited for the green light. “There are no clear rules for surviving the war,” she wrote, “but there are still rules for living.” (1674/4590) One can still be polite, be elegant, and be human. Such was her attitude while investigating war crimes committed against her fellow Ukrainians.

Since Amelina was killed while she was still researching and writing, editors have compiled her material to highlight lessons learned by the novelist turned war crimes investigator. Some of the material is presented as notes and unfinished sentences. That draws more attention to her death before she finished her work. It might be a little hard to read in some areas but well worth the effort.

I received a complimentary egalley of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review.

This was a gut-wrenching read. Not surprising when it’s a book about the atrocities of war. Victoria Amelina risked her life, and ultimately lost her life, to document the devastation in Ukraine. She gave real people the chance to have their stories told, and in doing so, Amelina makes it impossible for readers to discount the cost of war, or to easily dismiss what’s happening in Ukraine as just another world news headline. If only we could get our elected officials to read these words. Amelina is a true hero.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book.

Looking at Women Looking at War
(This review is based on an ARC sent to me by Net Galley)
by Victoria Amelina (Author), Margaret Atwood (Contributor)
In the foreword of the book this statement is the crux “In this war, Russia is fighting for greed, more territory, more material resources but Ukraine is fighting for its life, not only its life as a country, but the lives of the citizens of that country”
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in the country’s literary scene, and parenting her son. But she soon became a war crimes researcher and chronicled women like herself who joined the resistance, she states that ‘every day is chaotic and every day there’s hope that this day will be the last of the war”
Everyone in Ukraine knew that Amelina was documenting the war. She photographed the ruins of schools and cultural centers; she recorded the testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses to atrocities she was a chronicler of extraordinary women like herself who joined the resistance. These heroines include Evgenia, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, Oleksandra, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and Yulia, a librarian who helped uncover the abduction and murder of a children's book author.
This is an unfinished work on the evening of June 27th, 2023, Amelina and three international writers stopped for dinner in the embattled Donetsk region. When a Russian cruise missile hit the restaurant, Amelina suffered grievous head injuries, and lost consciousness. She died on July 1st. She was thirty-seven. At the farewell ceremony friends and colleagues spoke of her courage and empathy, her love for the land of eastern Ukraine which has endured so much and for the small frontline town called New York where she founded a literary festival in 2021.She left behind an incredible account of the ravages of war and the cost of resistance.

A memoir cut short. Amelina's work- her look at life in Ukraine in war- is heartbreaking,.especially since the reader knows that she will not survive an attack. The first half of this is all Amelina, the second half is her notes and commentary from others. It's an unusual construction and one that is both frustrating and insightful. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A very good read.

Books about wars are never easy to read. This one especially so because the war is ongoing, has lasted far longer than most people can imagine and because this author didn't have the opportunity to complete her work.

I did expect the book to be more complete - probably because I've never read a book that was finished after a tragic death of its writer. I also thought that it was a book of poetry...

It is a book that should be read by everyone - but will be a hard book to get to he ones who need to read it.

Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary, by Victoria Amelina, is a challenging book to read and review. As the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Amelina was in her thirties, parenting her son, and building her reputation as a writer. By combining her own observations with those of other Ukrainian women, she transmits the horrors, loss, and destruction in a beloved homeland. Amelina and her contributors are examples of the fortitude of women living through a war and still trying desperately to hold on to the remnants of normal life. Midway through writing Amelina was killed by a Russian missile. While the first part of the book is a coherent, if disturbing, account of war, the second half is a collection of notes. paragraphs, vignettes, some of which have been edited. There are also some notations by the editors. Surprisingly, I found the second half more devastating than the first because its’ very disjointedness mirrored the senseless loss of the author and horrific impact of the war. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read a digital ARC.