I enjoyed bits of this, but sometimes flat out felt like I wasn't the right audience for it. I think this book will do well with preteens and young teens, but not many other people.

This poetry is so gut-wrenching and emotional. I laughed and cried. I was inspired and moved. I felt Amanda's pain and power through the words. I adored the majority of the poems in here and I loved how they were interconnected. I read this all in one sitting.. This is what poetry is all about.

Okay, I've had enough of this.

i've
had
enough
of
this.

enough
is
enough
is
enough

I'm not going to live long enough to read everything on my TBR list. Ergo, I neither have to soldier through this one and work myself into a frothing rage over what qualifies as (Goodreads) award-winning poetry these days. In fact, I'm gonna do myself a favour and avoid anything that Goodreads members pick as "award winning".

did
not
finish

- i got other books waiting

Reading copy courtesy of NetGalley.

This book is a heart wrenching insight into the authors life. And I'm sure, will feel like an arrow to the heart to the many readers that can relate to it. A modern take on the poetic form, I thoroughly devoured these poems and will happily purchase a hardcopy so for me to truly get the most out of these words.
Each poem that resonated me felt both like a relief and a sucker-punch all at once. A truly great read.

This book is filled with beautiful poems that make you feel something. It reminded me in a way of Milk and Honey another poetry complication split into sections that I read this year and enjoyed very much as well. Highly recommend this to anyone new to poetry or who already loves the art form. It's a fast read with a lot of meaning and you can tell everything is personal but everyone can relate to the poems in some form even if they haven't experienced the exact same thing.

I'm starting to read more poetry. This was a good choice. What a title, by the way!

I enjoyed reading free verse poetry but unfortunately, this book didn't worked out that good for me. Some of the poems/prose were good but most of them felt flat. There was even one that I didn't understand at all. I'll probably appreciate this book more if I'm younger. The poems I loved were the book-themed ones and also the dedication. The author shared her own personal experiences and all the stuff she went through and I totally admire her for that.

This was such an empowering collection of poems. It was brutal, honest and deeply personal.

It seems like most people either hate this or love it, and I'm in the middle I have never read much poetry or been very interested in it. What grabebed my attention was the title I have also seen and liked some of the poems, so when I saw it on NetGalley I was excited for the chance to read it. A lot of the people who dislike this say it's not read poetry and just something you'd see on tumblr I'm not well versed in poetry so I'm not going to talk much about the structure of it. What I will say is that you shouldn't let your dislike of the style keep you from appreciating the meaning of what's being said and how raw it is.

I knew I was going to read this fast but I read it faster than I was expecting it only took me like forty minutes to read and that was with me rereading and taking screenshots of the poems I liked. The poems are just so short and simple like I said some of them are meaningful but sadly not as many as I was expecting and a lot of them especially in the you section are variations of lines I've seen a dozen times around the internet others were just cliche or I simply didn't like them much. I wish I had liked it more and been able to give it a higher rating nonetheless I'm glad I read it.

I got through these poems on my commute to and from classes tonight, which says something about how easily they read. It also ended up being an indicator of how well the mind retained them and what specifically it retained, which ended up, for the most part, being only fragments that I considered most problematic.

"The Princess Saves Herself in This One" sets out with good intentions - to act as a source of motivation for the reader, to share the speaker's (which I think is also the author's) story, and to spread female empowerment - all of which are valid. But I could barely get past the same, cliche princess in the tower scenario to feel the impact of most of these pieces, and the ones that I did feel struck me as problematic. For I found the tone of some of the poems to be preachy and slightly egoistic, pushing me away emotionally because I just couldn't agree with them. The two that stuck out the most was a piece that talked about how it's not you who's wrong but society, to which a response instantly arose: but WE are a collective society, every single individual, including myself and the author. And one must consider how we act within this society, whether we're trying to spread a healthy kind of encouragement or one that is liberal bordering on ridiculous. The other was a piece about how, just because a woman's body is capable of having children, she doesn't need to have them. And I know the speaker was talking about herself here, but I just took that one personally. This points to how careful one must be with arguments and statements. Yes, I know the speaker was talking about herself and her point of view, but given the tone of the collection and its aim I think it's fair to say that it tries to be personal, so when it becomes negatively personal it cannot be dismissed.

I didn't think the use of the princess and dragon metaphor was suitable either. We've gotten so hung up, I feel, with using this analogy, and trying to take ideas such as a princess becoming a queen in order to exemplify a freedom gained by the girl as she matures. Perhaps if we strayed from these familiar tropes and looked for comparisons elsewhere, carving, as so many like to argue, a new pathway through literature in the 21st century, then maybe people would refer less to the damsel-princess stereotype for girls because it would finally be seen as an outdated form of thinking. The same can be applied to the use of cliche images when talking about boys with messy hair and green eyes, or the language used when moping over a boy (for that is what this was). That mentality needs to change, or some effort should at least be made to change it, before we can make progress and move forward.

The content overall wasn't helped by the style of the poems, which felt like a random use of the Enter key to create an illusion of sentences as something poetic beyond their simple imagery and equally simplistic observations. Some will love these poems because of how simple and "down-to-earth" they are in the poetry genre, but these poems demands to be felt with a blind and obsessive kind of approach rather than asking the reader to think more into the imagery and metaphors. These poems felt like the literary equivalent of licorice as opposed to the Lindor chocolate of some other poems like Jamaal May, Louise Gluck, and Robin Richardson, to name a few. They're for the people who enjoy digging up the emotional pasts of themselves along with the speaker and trying to match the shreds and marvel over the similarity. For me it was a very surface level of poetry that, like contemporary art, tends to test the patience and really push the boundary of when something is called poetry and when it's trying to be something it really isn't.

There are different ways of dealing with the happiness and sorrow in our lives. "The Princess Saves Herself in This One" is virtually a personal journal that has been published and has thus gained its acclaim because of how naked it is in its use of language, it's use of striking through words about as complex as it gets in terms of style. For some, this is great, especially for those who see poetry as a way of extracting sensation and elation above all else. But I know there are poets who manage to weave beautiful words with equally powerful emotions - those poets are out there. And given how much I adored Jamaal May's collection that was also published in 2016, it makes me quite sad that it wasn't even nominated, whereas this won the prize. The style and content of these poems are an indicator of where society is going, and points more than ever to the divide that exists even within something like literature, which some argue is the perfect way for objectivity to be reached. All I knew was that I wasn't a princess nor did I want to be a part of the princess saving herself and becoming a queen trope. This is something that should be addressed more, for to truly combat these issues one actually has to begin changing them, not making the illusion of change.

This poetry book is phenomenal. I'm not usually a fan on poetry, however I follow Amanda Lovelace on a lot of social media and had scene a lot of her poetry before so I decided to give it a chance. Let me tell you, this book honestly changed me. The raw emotion that I could feel is something so rare. Amanda is so brave for sharing this part of her life with everyone and I have so much respect. Even though I could not personally relate to every poem in this book, I still felt like I could understand them and felt a strong emotional connection to the author and each individual poem. I would 100% recommend this book to EVERYONE, in fact I have recommended it to many people in my life. You can connect to this at any age and any point in your life. Truly a masterpiece.

A mixed bag - found some moments that I absolutely loved, but the repetitive format did start to grate on me.

What a beautiful book. The vision of the words on every page drew me in to your tale, and brought tears to my eyes. I hope to continue to see more of your writing. I've been following you on tumblr and was thrilled to get a chance to read your book. Fantastic!

Amanda Lovelace somehow did the impossible…she made me fall in love with poetry. I really enjoyed reading into her life, and silently rooting for her the whole way. Her story is a life that starts out hopeless and very, very sad, but it later blossoms and grows into a life worth living – a happy one, all about YOUR(her)SELF. Her story is so relatable, and can reach so many people who struggle with similar issues. All you have to do is read this book, and you’ll know that, despite everything, you will eventually be okay.

I love her style – she writes a poem that is then followed by a short sentence, either summarizing the above poem or driving home a hard point. I think this is so creative and inventive, and I was blown away by how she used this structure.

This was much better than I expected, if I'm being honest. Short bursts of poetry tell a running narrative over the course of the pages, covering loss, grief, love and more. Don't let the snobbery in other reviews put you off. Writing, like all art, is subjective and the meaning of poetry covers a wide range, despite some reviewers wanting to keep it within a very narrow category. Overall, the work was raw at times, poignant at others and a really satisfying emotional read.

Having just more recently gotten into reading poetry, I really still haven't read an extensive amount as of yet. But I found that once I got into the ebb and flow of Amanda Lovelace's The Princess Saves Herself in this One, it was extremely relatable . What I love about poetry is the short, quick catches of phrase that one can zoom past with such abandon, but the treat comes when you take the time to read, possibly re-read the words maybe read it aloud, change the cadence of how the phrase is said, when you can find new meaning(s) within the short, quick phrases. Amanda Lovelace's writings are riddle with such treats.

Another notable thing about this book that I quite loved was the build up of a theme. Almost like painting a picture. One poem would start a topic off and the ones following would build upon that slowly until you understood the direction and the topic at hand. There were a couple of times where the pattern would shift or change too suddenly for me, and I'd have to figure out that we had left off where we were and were off to something new. Then there were things started that I wish had been given more time to grow before we were off on another topic. But regardless, the often personal / private thoughts that take up the majority of the poems present a stark honesty that ranges from anywhere on the spectrum of sad to angry to happy to empowered to content, etc.

Overall, I enjoyed this poem collection. I look forward to going back and reading this one again seeing new thoughts / ideas that I may have missed before.

I received a copy of this ebook on Netgalley in return for an honest review.

And it couldn't get more honest.

So I've only just got back into the realm of poetry after compulsory education ruined it for me. Yes, forcing teenagers to sit and analyse classical poetry in silence is one way to make you never touch the stuff again, but the princess saves herself in this one is a must read for anyone, but could well be the savior for forced poetry reading teenagers everywhere.

Not only is it raw and heartbreaking, each poem tells a short story with an over-arching theme; life will try to ruin you, but only you can fight to survive it. Each poem feels more and more relatable, hitting you in the heart with a pen shaped spear. Amanda Lovelace's voice is truly one to not ignore.

No Kindle option which means I'm actually unable to read or review this title. Which is a shame as I've heard so many interesting things about it and I was pretty excited.

2.5 out of 5 stars

she can't sit here / with us anymore / & i'm sure we can all feel / the heaviness of her absence, / but even when every chair is taken / & everyone else has to stand, / it still feels like there will always be a space for her. / -your energy cannot be destroyed.


This was a very quick read. It was very easy to finish in one sitting, but this points to one of the big issues I had with this book. When I read a poem, and especially when I read a poetry collection, I expect to be compelled to reflect. I expect a good poetry collection to be something I am stuck in for days or weeks, something I keep thinking about and coming back to. This was definitely not that kind of poetry collection. The poems are more like paragraphs chopped into one or two-word increments and assembled to look like a stanza. Moreover, there is too little poetic usage of language in my opinion. This makes the themes come across as trite in some instances.

I was pretty excited to read this collection when I read the synopsis and heard some positive things about it. I liked the fairytale inspiration behind it and was expecting vivid, dreamy poems with a feminist tint. The themes of the collection are worthy and definitely need to be discussed, but I felt like the writing wasn't skillful enough to do the themes justice or to really reach me as a reader on an emotional level. This felt like a poetry collection by a teenager and for a teenager. There is nothing at all wrong with that, though, and I think a teenage reader might get more out of this book than I did. There are some good messages about loving yourself and about denouncing rape culture. The fourth and final part of the collection titled "& You" is pretty motivational and probably just what some teenagers need to hear.

emily— / i often / find myself / wondering / if you are still / out there / trying to find / yourself by / candlelight. / is sylvia there / beside you, / guiding / the way with / the old / brag / of her / beating / heart? / does / virginia / have / a room / all her own? / & what about / harriet / & anne / & harper? / does / a woman / ever / find / her peace?


I've interspersed some excerpts that reached me the most. I would recommend this book to young readers that aren't quite sure about poetry. It's a quick read to give you a taste and to make you think about some important issues (body image, rape culture, self-love/care).

My copy of this book was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for helping me get a copy of this book.

The Princess Saves Herself in this One is a poetry collection written by Amanda Lovelace. We follow her through four sections named:

I the princess
II the damsel
III the queen
IV you

Each section describes her growing up and the evolution of her feelings towards the people in her life, especially her mother and her first love, a man she calls the Dragon.

The Princess Saves Herself in this One made my eyes fill with tears. I really felt everything that was happening in almost all the poems. I loved that because, I rarely connect so well with poems. Do not get me wrong, I adore poetry, it is just that I am very picky with the poetry that makes me tremble - at moments I trembled when I read this.
The section I liked the most are II the damsel and III the queen. I connected most to those two sections. The section I slightly disliked the last one, IV you. I feel a bit disconnected from it. It was quite different from the previous ones and even a bit political. I hate when art suggests politics so strongly. It loses its beauty.


"...i am
far too
young
to be so
goddamn
broken...

~ what was the point?"

This is a part of a poem in the second section, II the damsel. It is so beautiful, and the whole poem was so strong, in meaning and in the sound of it.

One other poem I really liked is from the third section, III the queen. It made me feel so much in one fleeting moment.

"i am so glad
we were born
during the same
lifetime.

~ i may not believe in fate, but i believe in you"



There is some controversy concerning the fact that many people believe that the poems inside The Princess Saves Herself in this One are not really poems, merely words written by pressing enter after each one. I cannot completely agree, nor I agree. I think what is more important than the fact that the author Amanda Lovelace does not have the same genius in writing poetry as William Shakespeare, Francesco Petrarca Petrarch or Robert Frost, is the strong message she sends through her poems. The writing perhaps was not mind-blowing, but my heart felt every word.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review.