Depersonalise - MSJ

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️½

What a short, simple and sweet book of poetry.

I was given a copy by the author for an honest review! Thank you MSJ!

I really enjoyed the combination of the poetry and the illustrations. I find that some poetry lacks depth because of the lack of illustrations; this is just a personal opinion of course. But with this collection, the illustrations were very representative of the written word and I enjoyed that a lot.

One page that stood out to me said,

"I told the moon you were a drop of water in the ocean of my life; avoiding the fact everything you did felt like an earthquake, leaving a never ending ripple on the surface beneath."

I can't directly explain why this hit me differently than everything else, but it really described something that I've felt in a way that I've never heard it described before.

I also respect that the author used multiple illustrators rather than using just one! Multiple people got their artistic creations featured and they were all properly credited; I just loved that because there was a lot of artistic talent throughout this collection!

Thank you again to MSJ for a copy to review!

The Truth About Magic - Atticus

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.

Actually, most of the book I really enjoyed. There was just one part of a section that I didn't enjoy, the very end of The Magic of Words section. It talks about scars and how they aren't meant to be shameful, but how they are your stories and how he loves stories. For some people, their scars are their own personal battles, their struggles, whatever it is. I understand loving someone else for who they are, including their scars, but to capitalize on a persons scars is toxic. Especially if they don't want said scars to be mentioned are talked about. Vulnerability is huge, and revealing your scars to someone is a big deal. I feel like this book ruins that. It sees scars as something to magnetize and that doesn't sit right with me.

Besides that, most of this book was very enjoyable! There were even specific pages or stanzas that I took pictures of to add to my quotes page because I liked them so much. I enjoyed the photography included within the poetry as well. It's an aspect that I, personally, don't see often but wish I could see more of.

Overall, I would recommend this to someone that is just starting out with reading poetry. If you are seasoned or have just recently read fantastically written poetry, I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to you. However, as I previously mentioned if you struggle with scars, both metaphorical and physical, I would stray far away from this.

The Dogs I Have Kissed - Trista Mateer

Rating: ⭐️⭐️

I really wanted to like this more than I did. Considering I really enjoyed the last collection of poetry I read from this author, I was expecting to enjoy this as well. But I just didn't.

This just felt so angry. Resentful.

I'm not trying to say that its not okay to be angry or resentful or to hurt, but to go about expressing it in this specific way, to such a degree.

It's not bad, but it's not my taste.

It's not where I'm at right now.

If I were as angry, resentful and hurt as the author at the time of reading this, I think I would have fully enjoyed it to the capacity to which it was written.

But to be completely honest... I was feeling second hand embarrassment while reading this. Especially during the sections where it was talking about Texts I Shouldn't Have Sent To My Ex, like oh my god... it was so bad and cringe. But if those are things she actually sent to her ex, then mad respect for sharing that with readers. If I had sent things like that to my ex, I would definitely not share them to the world, so again respect to the author for that.

I also think I felt disconnected from this because I'm just not on the same path as the author.

It seems like we are and have been living two completely different lives.

What she has experienced, I don't personally connect with. Again, I'm seriously not trying to invalidate any of the hurt she feels/felt, I'm just expressing my own opinions because I personally have never experienced a lot of what she describes.