The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One by Amanda Lovelace

I had read The Princess Saves Herself in This One when it first came out, and I had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I liked the strong message in the story. On the other hand, I didn’t necessarily consider the style to be “poetry.” Nevertheless, I was glad to have received a copy of this from NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for my honest opinion. Here is my review:

Summary (Goodreads): The witch: supernaturally powerful, inscrutably independent, and now—indestructible. These moving, relatable poems encourage resilience and embolden women to take control of their own stories. Enemies try to judge, oppress, and marginalize her, but the witch doesn’t burn in this one.

Review: The style of this collection was just like the previous one. But this time around, I wasn’t as bothered by the style.

This time, more of the poems stuck with me and evoked strong feelings within me. This collection deals with a lot of difficult content that the author prefaces by giving a trigger warning. I found that, as I was reading the poems, I could feel the emotions that the author was mentioning. The anger roiled up in me at reading these words that portrayed injustice, the rage boiled up just like it was described in these stanzas. I felt something with this collection that I had not previously.

This made me pause for thought. I wasn’t expecting to be moved; generally, I am not very emotional and I don’t think any work of poetry has ever affected me emotionally. But this one did. Maybe it was because I feel strongly for the issues that were being discussed, maybe it was because I could relate to them through my own experiences. Either way, it made me connect with this collection and not care about the style of its presentation.

I will say that I wish there had been more personal poems from the author, rather than the collective voice of all women; while the latter is great, I want to get to know the author more through her work. I still have my mixed feelings about this style of poetry. With the more powerful poems, I was able to feel the flow and break of the words and stanza, and it felt logical. However, with the poems that weren’t so strong, I was once again feeling like the style was very tumblr-esque, which I didn’t really like.

Either way, this collection of poetry was one I enjoyed. It had strong poems and strong opinions that I could connect with. I hope that the author will try to incorporate more personal poems in her next collection. I’m giving this a solid 3/5 stars.

Happy reading ~