“To Make Monsters Out Of Girls” by Amanda LovelaceHappy June, everyone! I hope all of you have good reads for this month.
I’m back with another book review, and this time I’m reviewing the poetry collection “To Make Monsters Out Of Girls” by Amanda Lovelace! I’ve read one of Lovelace’s works before and I thought it could be stronger than what was presented. However, I was interested to hear that this specific collection is part one of a duology of collections (the second collection being “To Drink Coffee With A Ghost”).
Here’s a quick summary so we know what it’s about:
“Winner of the 2016 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Poetry, amanda lovelace presents her new illustrated duology, “things that h(a)unt.” In this first installment, to make monsters out of girls, lovelace explores the memory of being in an abusive relationship. She poses the eternal question: Can you heal once you’ve been marked by a monster, or will the sun always sting?”
Content Warning:
This collection contains depictions of abusive relationships, eating disorders, self-harm, cheating, alcohol abuse, death, and gore. There are also other content warnings that the author gave that I won’t list here, mainly because I didn’t really see those appear so much for me as a reader (though it could different with other readers), so read carefully if you want to pick up this collection.
Overall Thoughts:
Unlike “Break Your Glass Slippers,” which I previously reviewed, there are more titles given to each poem in “To Make Monsters Out Of Girls.” This made it easier to differentiate where poems started and began. Unfortunately, many of the free-verse poems followed similar structures of having one word per line, which got very repetitive over time. There was even one poem where the same words happened in multiple lines at once for almost two pages straight.
There are a few standout poems, such as “the question II,” but barely any of them stood out otherwise. I think it’s because so many poems followed the same type of structure. It’s one thing if I was reading a book full of traditional-form poetry, but I think that with free verse, you need to be a bit more experimental and not fall into having so many poems follow the same pattern.
Overall, I’m rating this out 1.5 of 5 stars!
I think if there were more varied poetry forms in this collection, I might’ve been able to rate this at least another star higher. As is, however, it lacks a lot of depth despite covering so much dark subject matter.
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