I liked this - I had the physical book but also grabbed the audio and kindle from the library. I went primarily with the audio. The narrator sounded older, the voice not quite matching the main character (12 year old Luka) ... but I guess it could be said it is his older self reflecting on his younger years.

While some of the writing felt a bit simplistic and straight-forward (not a lot of lyrical lines), it dealt with a lot of horror from the war, starting right off with the MC being buried under dead bodies. There is a lot of death. It kept my interest and I felt like I learned some things, but I also don't know how much I'll remember,  if this book will stand out in my memory at all, or just mix with all the other WW2 books I've read. 

This did highlight the Ukraine (and that has been of recent interest too) and how they were caught between Stalin and Hitler, horrible treatment from both sides.  The young MC had some basic medical background (his father being a pharmacist) and it's always interesting to me to hear about natural remedies and/or medical care back in history/during war time. 

27 chapters and an epilogue. The chapters did have little one word headers (Chill, Stars, Warmth, Snores ...) The headers weren't included in the Table of Contents in either audio or Kindle (and the physical book didn't have a TOC at all). I wished they had been ... I would have liked to just glance back over the headers and see if that could remind me what was in that chapter. 

1st person, past tense.
This is a "companion" novel ... I had not read any of the other connected books. I might look into them. I didn't feel the need to stop and make any notes or highlights. There were some informative author's notes at the end.  I found this book at a thrift store and picked it up for the LittleFreeLibrary. Seeing it had high reviews, I figured I'd give it a read first (it was during #middlegradeMay).