Genre: poetry, feminism, non-fiction

Publication Date: April 23rd 2016 by CreateSpace

Format: eARC from Andrews McMeel Publishing via Netgalley

A poetry collection divided into four different parts: the princess, the damsel, the queen, & you. the princess, the damsel, & the queen piece together the life of the author in three stages, while you serves as a note to the reader & all of humankind. Explores life & all of its love, loss, grief, healing, empowerment, & inspirations.

(from goodreads.com)

The message in this collection is one of the most powerful I’ve read in a while. Every poem in here just screams empowerment and they really spoke to me. Some of the words in here I felt I really needed to read, and that’s why I loved this collection so much.

This whole book centres around the idea that women should be proud of who they are as females – in fact people should just be proud of themselves – and that they don’t need to depend on anyone to lift them up, so to speak. The title of the book really does sum it up. It is a story that is personal to the author – their own story of escaping abuse and finding empowerment – and thus I don’twant to say too much on the actual story, other than that it is incredible and inspiring.

The main issue I had with this book was the actual writing itself. Technicalities, I guess. As a creative writing student who primarily focuses on poetry, I do query whether some of the poems are truly poems – though I am most certainly not alone in thinking this and conclude that it is an issue that cannot be ignored and put down to pickiness.

Let me say this now: pressing enter after every line does not make a poem. What the ‘poem’ is saying is absolutely wonderful – the words themselves work beautifully. But leave it as a sentence maybe. It would work so, so much better. If you read other anthologies in a similar style, you’ll realise that a new line is begun because the word is particularly relevant, because starting a new line at that point symbolises something. I was often reading these poems and feeling as though enter was pressed haphazardly after a paragraph had been written – keep it as a paragraph.

I still loved this though. It was beautiful, heartfelt, and powerful, and something that I really felt that everyone should read (I then went and nagged my friend to read it!). Just because I didn’t feel as though the formatting of the words was relevant or particularly well executed, I definitely do not feel the same way about the words written and the messages within the book. Will I be picking up more by this author? Definitely. I’m looking forward as well to seeing how her poetry style improves and changes in her next book.

Rating: 4 / 5 Stars.