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pabi's review
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.0
"We obsess over shame (the most useless emotion I can think of). "
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use, Pregnancy, Self harm, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Drug abuse
mandi4886's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
3.25
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcohol, Blood, Body shaming, Forced institutionalization, Self harm, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Medical content, Mental illness, Pregnancy, Vomit, Eating disorder, Suicidal thoughts, and Abortion
bladelikesbooks's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
3.0
Sweet, Young, & Worried is a poetry collection of the author’s personal life experiences. There are a plethora of poems in this collection that discusses themes of self-forgiveness, acceptance, queerness, internalised Homophobia, mental illness, eating disorders, grief, abortion, and healing.
The pacing/spacing of the writing seemed a bit disorientated and made it difficult to read at times. My favourite lines were: “You do not have to be a catastrophe to prove you are worth paying attention to”. The arrangement of the poems was a bit confusing as the ones talking about self-hate, EDs, Suicide etc we’re mixed with the ones talking about healing.
The more I think about it, this could have been done on purpose as a way to show that healing is not linear, and if it was intentional, I think it’s genius. As someone who has struggled with mental illness and eating disorders, I related a lot to the author’s experiences.
I usually struggle with reading poetry but this was very easy to comprehend and was a quick read. Although it covered many heavy topics, I think this poetry collection would be great for teens as a lot of what the author talked about is exactly what many teens experience everyday.
I didn’t understand the purpose of the birth chart. There was no writings about it or explanations as to why it was there, it was just kinda thrown in at the end for whatever reason I don’t know. And I know nothing about astrology so I have no clue what it means.
Overall, it was a nice, quick read and I would recommend this to teens struggling with EDs and/or mental illness and/or queerness. I feel they could benefit from connecting with this author so they can feel less alone and more confident that they can heal.
Although I appreciate the NetGalley description for providing some trigger warnings, I think it would have been beneficial to include a page at the beginning of the poetry book with a fuller list of trigger/content warnings considering the rawness of the poems and the heavy discussion topics.
Thank you to NetGalley and Button Poetry for allowing me an eARC of this poetry collection and most of all, thank you to the author for sharing your life experiences.
TWs/CWs - Abortion; Alcohol consumption; Animal death; Anorexia; Blood; Bulimia; Cussing; Drug use; EDs; Homophobia; Internalised Homophobia; Medical detail; Murder; Needles; Overdose; Psychiatric ward; Pregnancy; Self harm; Suicide attempt; Suicide ideation; Vomit
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Abortion, Homophobia, Medical content, and Eating disorder
Minor: Cursing, Drug use, Vomit, Alcohol, Animal death, Blood, Murder, and Pregnancy
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