Nicola Sturgeon memoir: Why I cried for Boris Johnson
The former first minister famously referred to Mr Johnson as a "clown" in an expletive-filled message exchange with her chief of staff Liz Lloyd.
That row emerged at the UK Covid Inquiry, with Ms Sturgeon describing Downing Street's announcement of a second Covid-19 lockdown in England as "excruciating".
Ms Sturgeon's memoir Frankly was supposed to be released on Thursday, August 14. However it went on sale early in Waterstones on Monday.
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In the book, the former first minister wrote: "I find it hard, even today, to look back on Covid without a torrent of emotion. It was the hardest period of my career, possibly my life."
She added: "I am still haunted by the impact of the decisions I took and those I didn't take.
"I still agonise over what I might have done differently. I think part of me always will."
Ms Sturgeon reflects on April 2020, when Boris Johnson was moved to an intensive care unit after contracting the virus, with his symptoms "worsening".
The Glasgow Southside MSP wrote of her political rival: "It was a moment in which the existential peril of the pandemic truly hit people.
"Whatever the science said, if it could fell even a Prime Minister, no one was safe.
"I remember feeling profoundly shaken by it and also fearing the worst.
"As I got dressed for work early on Tuesday morning, I wondered if I should wear black. It was horrible.
"When I sent Boris good wishes from my lunchtime briefing, I felt myself welling up."
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Ms Sturgeon also elaborated on communicative difficulties she had with the former prime minister at the height of the pandemic.
In May 2021, the UK Government dropped its 'Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives' advice that had been used by devolved administrations since the beginning of the crisis.
This decision was made "without any consultation whatsoever" with governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
By the summer of that year, she said "Johnson wasn't engaging" with devolved administrations.
She added: "Whenever he did grace us with his presence, I would be taken aback all over again by how unserious he was.
"The fact this was a virus that had come close to taking his own life made his attitude all them more inexplicable."
Ms Sturgeon also reflected on how she tried to take the "heat" from Dr Catherine Calderwood, Scotland's former chief medical officer who was forced to resign two weeks after a UK-wide national lockdown was imposed on March 23.
She had broken lockdown rules by making two trips to her second home in Fife with her family.
Ms Sturgeon said that with "hindsight" she should have told the medic to resign "immediately".
She wrote: "Not only would it have avoided hours of mounting public anger, but it would have also have been kinder to her."
However, she said: "In an hour-long press conference on Sunday, 5 April, I tried to take as much of the heat as I could."
It was after this press conference that Ms Sturgeon received a call from her then deputy first minister John Swinney to ask if "resisting" Dr Calderwood's resignation was the "right thing to do".
Ms Sturgeon said she became increasingly uneasy with the decision, writing: "I knew in my gut that I was in the wrong place. I also knew that if I stayed in that place, it wasn't just Catherine's credibility that would be shot. My own would be fatally undermined too."
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