“A necessary reminder that whatever we are feeling, we are never feeling it alone.” —Trista Mateer, author of Aphrodite Made Me Do It”There are defining moments in our lives that we often experience in certain places. It’s in these places, that we feel particular emotions, which help shape who we become. For anyone whose emotions are tied to places, this book is for you.”—Courtney Peppernell, … author of Pillow Thoughts By the author of the wildly successful 2am Thoughts, comes Nineteen — titled after the poet’s age when she wrote this new book. Nineteen is a collection of poetry that broaches heartbreak, love, loss, war, peace, and healing. For every place we go, there is a feeling or memory that’s been painted on the walls. You can paint over it, but it will always be there. Even if you can’t see it, you know. You can feel the heartbreak inside the bedroom where you lost a love. You can feel the hope at the coffee shop where a beginning happened. You can feel the healing as you sit in the driver’s seat, in charge of your own life.”A journey. An exploration. A reminder to put one foot in front of the other even when it’s dark because there is always a light waiting for you in the distance.”—Wilder, Author of Nocturnal”In spare poems with aphoristic lines and short prose segments, the book speaks to adolescent pain and suffering.”—Publishers Weekly Check out Makenzie Campbell’s other hit poetry book 2am Thoughts
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Thank you Central Avenue for a complimentary copy. I voluntarily reviewed this book. All opinions expressed are my own.
Nineteen
By: Makenzie Campbell
REVIEW
Aptly named for author Makenzie Campbell’s age at the time, Nineteen is a poetry collection well suited to that age. It is a time of heartache, falling and out of love, transitioning and drama. While interesting and accessible, I found the collection more like the inner ramblings of a young woman with not enough life lived to speak from a place of experience. Essentially, the essence of maturity was absent. Given time, Nineteen could become something more solid, such as thirty, perhaps?
Firstly, I’d like to thank NetGalley, Central Avenue Publishing and Makenzie Campbell for gifting me an eARC for an honest review.
I feel like each chapter in this book got better and better. I wasn’t really getting much from the first chapter but as I continued reading I felt that I could relate more to each piece. The title Nineteen is a reference to how old Campbell was when she wrote this book. Being 19 only a few years ago I could really see where Campbell was and how her poetry was important for people of that age group. When I was 19 I finally decided to take my writing seriously and accepted and embraced the road of becoming an author, however successful. I really saw this message nearer the end of the book which I think is a very positive message to put out into the world.
This poetry collection covers a wide range of topics, for example: heartbreak, love, loss, war, peace, and healing. I think that it’s a great poetry anthology but maybe the writing needs some work. It felt very simple at times when I just wanted a little more. It was a very emotional and abstract book which made it hard to picture a lot of what the poetry was about. Maybe if Campbell focused on some concrete images in her poetry it would work a little better for her readership. I did enjoy the cute art work that was scattered throughout the book by Hannah Juth.
When I read a poetry book I want to get lost inside of it, I want it to touch my soul, I want it to touch my feelings, I want to make me feel things that I didn’t even know I had inside of me. For me that’s what a good poetry book does.
Unfortunately Nineteen fell short on that, it had a good promise. It has good art inside to go together with the poems, the poems are suppose to reflect on events and that should bring feelings or memories just from certain places. But I couldn’t connect with the poems, the way it was written…
I still liked a couple of the poems inside of them and would love to check out her other work and see how I feel about.
3 out of 5 stars for this one.
I got an ARC from Netgalley.