Friday, February 8, 2019

Bleed Like Me

Book 11 of my 2019 Reading Challenge
read from January 19 - 29

Bleed Like Me: Poems for the Broken
by Azzurra Nox

Summary (via Goodreads)
Expected publication: February 2019 (I read pre-publication thanks to NetGalley)
This is how you draw a broken heart:
Dip your fingers in blood and don't
Hesitate to botch the final project.

This is a book about love and the wounds that it can bring. It explores the exhilaration of first love, the damage of unrequited love, and the distress of abandonment. The poems are little memories that come alive, a journey between reality and fantasy, often mingling as one. Fragments of life depicted in words. This is a collection of poems both cruel and sweet. The poems depict the difference between how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. But most of all, this is a kaleidoscope of emotions that are multiplied and amplified as the reader looks into the window of a young woman's heart.

My Opinion
2 stars

*I received an electronic copy of this book via NetGalley and would like to thank the author and/or publisher for the opportunity to read and honestly review it*

Poetry is so subjective that I'm really not comfortable giving a full critique of it.  What I can say is that is the poetry was very descriptive and generated a visceral reaction but it wasn't something I personally enjoyed.  I liked the content of Part II a lot more than Part I.

It felt a little melodramatic but I can chalk that up to being so far removed from personally experiencing heartbreak (I'm 39 and have been with my husband for 19 years).  In most situations when I didn't really like it but also don't feel like the target audience, I will rate it a neutral 3 stars and move on.  The reason I didn't in this case is because even though I feel the melodrama might lend itself to a younger audience, the number of poems that referenced suicide as a solution to stop feeling the pain of heartbreak makes me hesitate in a recommendation to someone younger.  There's a difference between being broken-hearted and being a little unhinged; if I read any of her poems as social media statuses I would be reaching out to her to make sure she's safe and okay.

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