jeannep_l's review against another edition

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inspiring sad fast-paced

4.75


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vanessa_v's review against another edition

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reflective fast-paced

1.75

this is the first poetry book i've read but i think these kinds of poems aren't really my cup of tea. there were some amazing thoughts and quotes that i saved and during the whole time i felt like i was reading someone's journal but i personally think that putting words in different lines isn't really poetry

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macysmith's review

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inspiring tense fast-paced

3.5


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sgriffinn's review

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emotional hopeful medium-paced

2.5


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abbbymyles's review

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dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

3.0

this was a lot sadder than I remembered - definitely recommend checking TWs before reading.
I didn’t love that part III was really the only happy part but it revolved around a man. It made healing feel like an attachment or another person, as opposed to something that can happen individually within yourself.

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readsbyhope's review

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.0


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utuisuus's review

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emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective relaxing fast-paced

3.0


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hmcendree's review

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emotional reflective fast-paced

5.0


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misslescatiz's review

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emotional fast-paced

1.5


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glitterpricked's review against another edition

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dark hopeful sad fast-paced

1.0

no joke, it took me less than 20 minutes to read this. and that's considering the fact that I reread some of it a couple times. I was looking for an easy and quick read to get me through the evening and I kind of knew what I was getting into with this book considering that I read some of Rupi Kaur's work earlier on in the year, but this was just so bad. there were a couple of pages in the second part that I was kind of liking but that was it.

I'm not a poetry snob at all, I barely read poetry actually, but variety is so important in any book. if a novel used only simple sentences or long sentences just with "and" in the middle a bunch of times, I would lose my mind. I don't think it counts as poetry to press enter after every couple of words and to type in lowercase and to maybe switch up the formatting once in a while.

I appreciate that she was very open about her personal struggles, but I feel like there's this kind of trap where heavy topics equal good somehow. if Amanda Lovelace was writing about the mundane, this book wouldn't have sold very many copies, despite the fact that there are many poets who can make the mundane sound beautiful, all without over-romanticising it too. but Lovelace soaked their poems here with bland, surface-level metaphors that personally did nothing for me. the themes in a book are not enough to make something worth reading.

and in terms of the themes, there were plenty of topics that are worth discussing in wider society. however, one of my problems with Lovelace was that she added nothing new to the conversation. again, I haven't read much poetry, let alone instapoetry, but most of what Lovelace spoke about could've been found all across Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and pretty much anywhere else on the Internet. yes, fatphobia is a horrible thing, but saying it's a horrible thing isn't a poem; it's a statement that can be thought of and written down in less than 30 seconds, and then apparently published. it's not poetry to recycle things that have been said thousands of times before.

there's probably more I can say, but I've spent more time on this review than I did reading the book so I'd rather not draw it out any longer. I'm willing to give more of their poetry a chance considering how long ago this was written, but for now, my opinion of their work (not them as a person!) isn't great, to say the least.

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