I used to love Amanda Lovelace. In 2017 when I was going through some incredibly tough times, Amanda's poetry brought me solace and made me feel less alone. I read volume after volume, always preferring it over the more "mainstream" Rupi Kaur. So when I saw Amanda Lovelace had a new collection coming out and it was available to request on Netgalley, I was thrilled.

I hadn't read any of Amanda's work for a few years and I was hoping to experience more of the same fondness and comfort in her words. What I failed to take into account I guess is the passage of time and how my own tastes have matured. It's been seven years since Amanda's debut work and yet 'she followed the moon back to herself' follows the exact same formulas and shows a rather alarming lack of sophistication and development on Lovelace's part. 

I was unfortunately taken aback by the immature and frankly, juvenile style of writing. For a poet now in her thirties, I had hoped to see some semblance of evolution from her early days but this collection read like some angsty teenage Tumblr post circa 2007. Half the book was a wallpaper-style repeat graphic so the actual collection took me about 15 minutes to read. It was shallow and lazy and I sadly believe that it's work like this that gives poetry a bad name and is why many poets struggle to be taken seriously.

I'm disappointed to have to give such a harsh review but I honestly hoped for much much more than this.

Thank you to Netgalley and Andrew McMeel Publishers for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.