Hi friends, happy Monday! I hope you’re all doing well. Today I’m posting my review of Diane Ackerman’s book, The Zookeeper’s Wife.

The Zookeeper’s Wife by: Diane Ackerman: Jan and his wife Antonina were zookeeper’s at the Warsaw Zoo before the war hit. This explored life for Antonina as a mother, a keeper of the animals and the “Guests” that would stay during the war. Using Antonina’s diaries and historical references, Ackerman brings this story to life. For the most part, this was really interesting because the reader had no idea about any of this. What they found truly interesting was how the Nazi’s were obsessed with animals and having unique and obscure ones, as well as wanting to create their own or to bring back ones that were extinct. It’s a side that never really gets told, so that was definitely captivating. At the same time, reading about Antonina and her life was riveting because that was not an easy time; the reader truly felt for her. We certainly got to see the type of person that she was; Ackerman did a good job of portraying who she was, but telling the actual story could get flat. Even though this had all really compelling facts and stories, it wasn’t told in the most engaging way. The storytelling felt a little all over the place and the reader found they would zone out for a time because the writing got to be a little dull. This didn’t know if it wanted to be a fiction or non-fiction book at times because Ackerman tried to make it as novel with fancy prose, but then would flip and get technical like a textbook, there was no in between, which gave this a bit of a clunky read. Most of this was told in chronological order, but there were parts where it would go out of sync and that would throw the reader off. In the end, this wasn’t a bad book, and the reader is glad they read it because the content was actually very fascinating, it just didn’t work how it was presented.