Smoke & Mirrors is the third book from Michael Faudet. A beautiful collection of poetry and prose that touches upon falling in love and feeling brokenhearted, his writing is whimsical, sometimes unexpected and often erotic. I have enjoyed all of his books thus far, and Smoke & Mirrors is no exception. I look forward to reading more of his work and see him branch into different ideas and avenues.

In terms of poetic style and innovation, this book really isn't it. And though I'd heard from friends that Faudet's work was more on the erotic side and was prepared for that, I still cringed a lot while reading the content and felt uncomfortable. Some pieces were actually praise-worthy and something I could go back to but overall, this was not for me.

This wasn't my favorite of Michael Faudet's poetry collections, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it overall.

I quite enjoy his work as a whole, as his poems work for me and are my cup of tea.

This collection was structured with poetry, prose, and short stories.

I found this collection to be the perfect blend of all the ingredients that make me a fan of Faudet's work: incredibly beautiful poems, mixed with deliciously dirty, mixed with deeply touching that even managed to bring a few tears to my eyes. I found quite a few of them to be relatable too, which of course, is something that I always find important when reading a poetry collection.

All in all, this was a solid collection that I really enjoyed, and I will definitely be continuing to read Michael Faudet's work.

I loved reading through this collection and I ended up purchasing a final copy for myself! Highly recommend.

As always, Michael Faudet made me fall in love. This was such a beautiful and poignant collection and I absolutely loved every minute of it! <3

This book will make you feel all the feelings you never thought you'd feel. What makes it unique is it's different from Lang Leav's style, but it resounds it in such a way that it creates its own identity. Every page is a masterpiece, and I can't get enough of Michael Faudet.

This poetry collection was not as good as his first book, but I did enjoy some of the poems.I love poetry. I read a lot of it, but I found this collection hard to connect with.

Smoke & Mirrors was just one of those collections that did not click with me. The quality of writing and the messages being conveyed were not completely lost on me. The poems were generally comprehendible, and I was able to immerse myself in the work enough to get through to the end—but that was about it. At times, Faudet’s style was quite off-putting, and that caused a massive disconnect for me and blocked out any important ideas and themes. I found nothing really stood out, nothing touched me or had the impact that the author clearly intended his writing to have.

This collection as a whole does not seem like it would be easily accessible to a wide variety of readers. To me, these poems were not very poetic. The poems that had more of that proclaimed “whimsy” to them were the ones that I enjoyed the most. There were displays of love, heartbreak, happiness, and loss. These poems spoke to me—they were subjects I could connect to—and he phrased these topics in a beautiful way. Through the very beginning of this collected work, I felt much more engaged.

But then, many of the other poems in the next two thirds or so seemed very rough and graphic, taking away any lyrical aspects of the writing. Part way through the collection, the subject matter shifts abruptly into much more mature topics, which in itself is not an issue at all—poetry deals with all sorts of topics, from basic emotions to the more intimate aspects of life. The trouble I had was with the way he worded these things. I just found myself feeling uncomfortable, sometimes verging on disgusted. Again though, this is my personal opinion—definitely not a reflection of how everything comes across to every reader.

I read many positive reviews of Faudet’s work prior to picking this collection up, and I can see how his subject matter and use of language would appeal to some people. His subject matter and voice are, like most poets, very singular and attract different types of readers. This particularly came across as a very niche style—the way he portrays his thoughts and feelings is very unique and very direct. However, his writing was just not for me, and I don’t think I will be picking up any of his other collections in the future.

This collection and Faudet’s writing didn’t strike a chord with me. It didn’t feel like there was much life in his poems here, like he was writing because he had to and not because he wanted to or believed in these works. Some were decent, some were just plain bad. This was my first time reading a collection from Faudet and, sadly, it’ll probably be my last.

Disclaimer: I received a free advanced copy in exchange for a review. This holds no sway over my opinion or review of the book.

Michael Faudet is easily one of the best upcoming contemporary poets today- his language is sensual, and his words wrap themselves around the reader like a lover, and just hangs on.

Beautiful!

Very emotional and moving book of poetry. A great addition to anyone's library.

This is Michael Faudet’s third poetry collection. I completely adored Dirty Pretty Things but found Bitter Sweet Love to be alright. This collection harks back to what made me fall in love with his writing. It’s a mixture of poems, short stories and quotes that explore love, relationships and sex. However, unlike his previous collections, the writing here focuses more on love and relationships than sex, something I found I could connect with more.

I read this collection in one sitting, although I do have to be completely honest, I skipped over the poems that were sexually explicit. That’s just not my thing and in past books they could be quite crude, so why push to read something I know I won’t enjoy? I think I would have loved this collection more if it was just the author speaking from his heart. The poems of failed relationships, longing and heartbreak are what appeal to me and when done right, the author can really stir up feelings I’ve long forgotten. I quite enjoyed how Faudet can transmit such raw and intense emotion in very few words. That, however, is not the case with his short stories. They were long and drawn-out…they lacked the urgency of his poems and brought the book to a standstill.

So, while I think this was a significant improvement to his previous release, Smoke & Mirrors was a mixed bag. It reminded me of why I love most of Faudet’s poems, but other parts were slow and cold. I guess it’s sometimes hard to top a much beloved debut but this collection gave me some hope that the next will be even better.

Smoke & Mirrors was a collection of poetry, prose and short stories.

Some of it was incredibly beautiful, others were perfectly dirty, some deeply touched me and even brought me to tears.
I related to many of the texts...
So, basically, I seriously loved it.

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I remember loving Michael's works on Tumblr a few years ago for the erotic theme but this collection is just dull and underwhelming for me.

love the author discovered him on tumblr and love everything he writes!!

The author definitely has a way with words. I enjoyed a couple poems immensely and the rest moderately. I have many friends and customers who’ve told me about how much they’ve enjoyed his work and maybe I was hoping for too much and that’s why I feel this way but he just didn’t work for me. I’ll try one more of his books to be sure still.

Michael Faudet's prose and poetry collection, Smoke & Mirrors is my first read by the bestselling author-poet and I could say that I am very impressed by his exploration and embroidery of love, lust, and longing. His words were brush strokes against a dull world, sometimes the breaking open of seams and wounds long forgotten. These stories are the footprints the waves could never wash away.

I highly recommend it and would surely read Faudet’s other works.

I honestly was pretty meh about most of these poems - erotica in fiction doesn't bother me, but I wasn't expecting it in this collection so it was a shift. And, I guess, that's not my brand of poetry. The title poem, at the very end, was so good, though, I'm considering upping my rating to 4 stars. Maybe 3.5?

I wrote a short thing here right after finishing it and I still kind of feel the same way, but I wanted to expand on why. I really love poetry but I'm still figuring out what I like in relation to poetry. And, sadly, this is not what I'm into. I enjoyed it, even really liked some of the poems, but I just don't care as much for poetry about people's significant others?

And this was erotic poetry - which I have no problem with erotica, I read it a lot - but this just felt weird to me, which is probably just me, and I definitely would recommend checking this one out for yourselves but this wasn't really for me.

I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for letting me have an early copy of this book for an honest review.

Smoke & Mirrors falls in the 2.5 range for me.

I picked this book up because of the cover and got caught up in the poetry easily. It was relatable and heartbreaking and really made me want to keep turning the page. Faudet did a wonderful job of putting certain feelings into so few words, but as soon as the poems turned into short stories momentum I had slowed down. It was harder to get back into the flow afterward. The short stories didn't pack the same punch for me that the poems did and in my mind, that made the book lose some of its luster.

I didn't know this going in that the author will write erotic things, so when that came up in this book that was another turn off for me as that simply isn't my cup of tea and that scene was fairly detailed.

Overall, I thought the poems were good, but this isn't a book that is going to stick with me for very long.