I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

"Momma always told me to watch out for
wolves in nice suits
But even the strongest wolf will perish with
the right dose of poison." -- Wolves


Alright, first off: I love reading poetry, I hate reviewing poetry. I find it difficult to rate such deep, personal, sensitive works like popular poetry. Most popular poetry works include themes that the author themselves have experienced before and thus I find it difficult to rate such personal experience.

Nevertheless, I requested this ARC for an honest review, so that's what I'm going to give. I...did not like this as much as I thought I would. I absolutely loved the first part called "Garden of Myth and Lore". I'm a sucker for fantasy/lore inspired/mystical/mythical poetry, so we were off to a great start! But then, the style changed, and all the poems started to become really personal. They got dark, horror-like, and even disturbing. I'm all for horror books and disturbing storylines, but I'm not here for stalker poems, self-hatred poems, killing poems, cutting poems, without a redeeming ending, or an ending that leaves me somewhat 'satisfied' (that's a strange word to use in this context...).
Like, in The Princess Saves Herself in This One, at the end of the poetry book the author reflects back on her journeys and shows the reader her self-worth in a better light. This book didn't do that. It's very depressing and strange.

I don't know. It was...different at least? I guess?

Melancholic. Macabre. Magnificent. These gothic poems were surprisingly haunting and beautiful, steeped in a blend of gaslap and fantasy elements. Like a verse tale whispered in the night. I loved it!

The idea behind this was great, but the execution was quite poor with a nod to folklore rather than being focused on it. Rather disappointing.

A poetry collection that is dark and fantastical ? sign me up!
However, the poetry style that has been published recently is not what I usually enjoy. I guess it's a bit too modern for me... And it's what we have here. Also, I don't believe the fantasy/horror themes were the main focus, which was disappointing.
I couldn't relate to most poems (sometimes they felt a bit creepy, in a bad way), and was indifferent to the whole book in general.

Beautiful writing. I love the macabre aesthetic of the cover and that darkness transfers over into the content of the poetry itself. I will definitely be buying this book for myself.

I received a copy of this book for a fair and honest review. I have always been a lover of poety. It is deep and meaningful way of expressing one's self. I try to read poetry as often as I am able. When I found Krystal's book I had to have. I read it a couple of times and the poems did not mean the same things to me even if I was reading the same words again. That is the thing about poetry is means different things to each person who reads it. She does have a way with words. They wave a story and mental pictures for each poem she composes. It is a great collection of works.

Thank you to Netgalley for an ecopy.

I gave Garden of Raven’s three out of five stars. I didn’t mind it, I don’t really connect with that many poems. I highlight a few that I liked but for the most part it just seemed average. It’s not anything that I would of exhale for myself or someone else. I was hoping for more from seeing the cover.

Written by Krystal Jane Ruin, Garden of Ravens is a collections of poems that are supposed to be “A collection of dark poetry that journeys through folklore, twisted tales, mental breakdowns, and depression.“

I honestly didn’t like this much at all. There were a few poems that I found interesting, but overall I just wasn’t impressed. Nothing really stuck out, and the folklore was only really obvious on a few of them.

Wouldn’t really recommend this unless you really enjoy dark poems.

I was given a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't end up connecting with this book of poems. They're nicely written, and a few of them stood out to me, but I didn't think there was anything radically new here. What I did like was how the book was divided into sections, each of them named "Garden of ______". This went along with the theme quite well. It's a pretty dark book of poetry in that all of the poems are fairly depressing/sad. And the cover is really pretty. I just don't think the poems quite match what I thought they would be.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

These poems are exactly dark, deep, and quite depressing in general. I know many people read this type of work to find some common theme or feeling, to relate to someone who is having the same experience, or to find some type of connection. The book contained some very expressive work.

This collection of poems is just ok. A lot of the poems struck me as similar to ones I wrote in 7th grade when I thought no one could possibly understand me or my pain. Also, I might not be the right audience for it because these remind me a lot of Rupi Kaur's poetry, and I'm not impressed at all by Rupi Kaur's style. While the majority of them aren't terrible original, there are a couple that stand out. "I Love Coffee" and "She Loves This Boy" are great. They're both darkly funny and have more of the macabre sense I was expecting to find in these poems. Ruin isn't a bad poet because her work shines in "I Love Coffee" and "She Loves This Boy," and I hope to see more work from her that's similar in tone and style to those two gems.

While I could strongly relate to a part of this book, another part highly irritated me.

<blockquote><i>for the overthinkers</i>

- the dedication</blockquote>

Garden of Ravens is a poetry collection on love, moving on, depression, and abuse. The book it divided into different "<i>gardens</i>":
Garden of Myth and Lore
Garden of Graves
Garden of Shadows
Garden with a broken gate
Garden of Storms
Garden without a key
Garden of Starlight

<blockquote><i><b>Love is a Garden</b>

Love is like a wild garden
Sure, it's beautiful when it rains
But when it doesn't
Everything dries up and dies
And then you just have a bunch of plant corpses
Lying these and drying up in the sun
Not even rotting
Just turning to dust</i></blockquote>

Most of the poems are about love and different kinds of dealing with a break-up. I know there are different stages but I'm really talking about different kinds. While in some poems the narrator is grateful for the experience and on her path to moving on, in others, the narrator blames herself for <u>not being enough</u> and very possibly thinks of ending her life, or hates the world for hurting her and swears to never to love again.
As much as interesting was to see the different kinds of how some people deal with a break-up, some of them were just too irrational to me to feel true. Now, I know each of these reactions was driven by a different kind of emotions but reading about woman blaming herself for not being enough and driving away the only love in her life (although abusive) is enough for her to give up on <i>love</i> or even worse a <i>life</i> felt slightly pathetic to me at first. And then it hit me that this is really happening out there in a world where women <i>let</i> themselves to be abused just for the sake of occasional display of "love" and "caring" from their partner. And I started to ponder where does this come from that some women are able to mistake abuse for love? When you think about something long enough, you get many answers, many theories, which may or may not be correct, but it gets you closer to understanding the problem.
At first, I was disappointed in the poems but then I realized that this book taught me more about love, different kinds of love, than any other book before. And I'm not talking about romantic, equal, devoted kind of love. I'm talking about love's other side. The unhealthy and abusive kind of love. Even sick and perverse (yes, my honest reaction to the poems <i>"I love coffee"</i> and <i>"She loves this boy"</i> were <b>what the fuck?!?!</b>)
Let's move on.

The part that I strongly related to are poems about depression. Most of them coming from Garden of Shadows. They are not just about depression. They are also about insomnia, self-deprecation, darkness, loneliness, and feeling abandoned.

<blockquote><i><b>Dark Abyss</b>

I whispered I wanted to die
No one heard me
No one tried

I whispered I wanted to die
No one understood
No one asked why

I whispered I wanted to die
Would anyone miss me
Would they say goodbye

I whispered I wanted to die
I wanted happiness
I wanted life</i></blockquote>

This review took me quite a while to write, to sort all my thoughts and opinions, and the time helped me realize how much this collection of poems stuck with me. It stays on my mind. And some of these poems stay in my heart ♥ It wasn't perfect all the way down, but then nothing ever is.

<i>Thank you to NetGalley and The Narcissistic Rose for providing me e-copy for this book in exchange for an honest review. I solemnly swear that all opinions are my own.</i>

Poems are to a page in length, some more. Get poems are based on tales/myths/legends. Others are personal feelings and issues gone through. Well done poetry.

This book of poetry leads the reader down a dark trail of loss and depression. Breakups, unrequited love, lack of self-worth are all common themes. At times, very difficult to witness the self-deprecating, psyche annihilating descent into mental breakdown depicted in these poems. Author plays with form and function, but at times it felt a bit sophomoric to me. Grouping poems by stages of that descent into darkness was a clever device that added meaning to the following passages. Overall, too dark for me.

Thanks to netgalley and The Narcissistic Rose for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

It's a no for me. As someone who is very familiar with the subject matter, I felt like this book was all over the place. Like what are you trying to say? It just seemed very generic to me. I also feel like the author needs some real counseling because some of the stuff was kinda creepy and not in a good way either. Mental health is serious matter, and if this is a cry for help please find some immediately, because too much is going on in this world right now for things like this especially to be ignored. I hope you find peace whatever your going through.

This collection of poetry unfortunately disappointed me.

I have read numerous poems with similar subject matter before, but the way this collection was executed didn't add anything new to the topic. It honestly felt as-if it was written by someone in a deep depression that still has a lot to work through with a trained professional. It's one thing to write about heartbreak and mental illness, but it becomes a bit worrisome when stalking and murder is thrown into the discussion so nonchalantly.

In general, these poems were quite chaotic and didn't seem to follow much of a narrative. Many poems started out powerful but about half-way through got very messy and awkward. I honestly considered DNF'ing this multiple times. Maybe this just isn't the type of poetry that interests me?

I went into Garden of Ravens thinking I was going to get a clever collection of poems that uses themes of folklore and fairytale. After all, as the description says, it is a" collection of dark poetry that journeys through folklore, twisted tales, mental breakdowns, and depression".

What there actually was of folklore was very little, and I would not call the use of these references clever. There were references to Little Red Riding Hood, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Macbeth, Greek Myths, and a few others; I can see how they were trying to be used, in a way of feminism and representation of abuse. However, all these references did was add a small amount of intellect to an otherwise depressing collection. All in all the folklore themes really were not very important to this collection, which is disappointing.

Most of the collection is about heartbreak and it is very clear that the author needs therapy. It is in the same style and theme as the poems of Rupi Kaur. I understand why it sells, it directly evokes a lot of emotions that people feel when they are unlucky in love. However, the constancy of that theme makes the collection (and others like it) very oppressive and, again, not clever. There was no cleverness in the meter or words used; there were sometimes rhyme schemes but that felt like using rhyme scheme for the sake of rhyme scheme and not for any particular poetic purpose.

Some of the poems, also, were quite creepy. Not horror/folktale creepy, but as if the author is a stalker creepy. I honestly wonder why the publisher thought this collection was a good idea. The themes are good, but the execution is just plain awful and shows no careful or artistic thought. I would not recommend this to anyone.

Garden of Ravens has been both excellent and corny at times. I actually found quite a few that I liked that were different from your typical poems. They resonated with me in ways that I really liked. The themes of heartbreak, then not giving a damn, and then sadness again was good. I liked some of the poems that had like mythology added to it like "I, Medusa".

My favorite ones were
"I, Medusa"
"Wolves"
"For Us" (my favorite)
"Scarred"
"Abandoned"
"Darkest Night"
"Shadows of Silence"

Some poems were in likeness to Emily Dickinson and being that she is my favorite poet I found myself enjoying this one. I always have a hard time rating poetry books because there is always poems I like, love, and then the ones follow a common language and flow.

I received this from NetGalley for reading and reviewing purposes.

Thank you Netgalley and Xpresso Book Tours for sending me a digital arc of this book.
3.5 stars.

I don't read poetry often but when I saw the description of this book that promised me dark twisted fantasy, folklore and myths, I was highly intrigued. Unfortunately I did not get much of that. The poetry in this book seems like a compilation of the author's personal thoughts and feelings. But I am not complaining because I really enjoyed this book.

Garden of Raven is divided into seven section - each sections dealing with themes like mental illness, lost love and pain. Some of the poems are very dark; especially the ones about depression and self loathing; so here is a trigger warning for those who are not too comfortable reading about it. I certainly enjoyed the writing style. The emotions conveyed in this book hit too close to home.

However, some of the sections were quite boring too and I had to skim through them.

Overall, this was a nice collection of poetry and it does not take much long to read. I look forward to reading more works of this author.

In my opinion, poetry is the second most personal form of writing (memoir being first). My review for Garden of Ravens is not a review of the author of their personal struggles that may have influenced this collection of poems. My review is on the collection itself. The title and cover support the book's description: A collection of dark poetry that journeys through folklore, twisted tales, mental breakdowns, and depression. When I first saw the cover and read the description, I was excited to read twisted poems, dark tones, folklore...horror, dark metaphors or spine-tingling poems. What I found were poems that had more meaning to the author than the reader. Some were two lines long, some longer. None were that remarkable, dark, twisted, or anything. Many left me saying, "Okay, I guess." If someone opened the book expecting twisted tales or dark poems, they will feel cheated. I just cannot recommend this book.

Thank you, NetGalley and The Narcissistic Rose for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy.