Lovelace has extraordinary capability with words, a skill which lends itself beautifully to her poetry collections. I especially appreciated her honesty in writing about her relationship with her late mother, with whom she had a complicated relationship. The simple format of Lovelace's poems works in her favor. Bold statements about becoming her own person and unlearning toxic messages are incredibly impactful when they are not buried in swaths of unnecessary phrases. Her poems stand out on each page.

All of Lovelace's poems are drawn from personal experience and memory, yet every reader can understand her questions about life after death and pervasive childhood memories. Every time I read one of her books, I come away with a new outlook on life, and I appreciate her wisdom and perspective that has been so carefully cultivated within this book.

I give To Drink Coffee with a Ghost 5/5 stars, and recommend it (and all of Lovelace's work) to readers everywhere.

I liked this collection but I found it hard to relate to. It was very specific to her experiences which is unlike her other books where I felt her poems were more open to interpretation and relatable. There were some really strong poems but there were also some I felt like I had read in the past so I wasn't that impressed.

I have always enjoyed reading Amanda Lovelace's poetry collections. I have read all of them and will continue to do so in the future as she releases them. I will say, I prefer this series over her first. I think this one pacts more emotion--especially this one. This deals a lot with grief and the trauma of losing a parent and how she dealt with that dark time in her life. I really enjoyed this--the cover is also stunning. The writing was beautiful--and once again, I can't wait to read more from her.

To Drink Coffee with a Ghost by Amanda Lovelace is a collection of powerful poems about the relationship between her and her late mother. The poems were bittersweet, detailing the complex love-hate relationship with her mothers.
The poems, while in a formatting I personally am not a fan of, were amazing and while I didn't connect to them completely, they spoke levels of emotions the writer was trying to release. And some poems felt like the writer herself was trying to speak words of wisdom to the reader.

you are not
a disappointment.

you are not
the culmination

of what people
expect of you.

- life is not a pass of fail.

I apologize as I'm unable to review this book. It will not download properly to any device I have. And I have searched for other apps to download it onto. But it does not want to open up for any app.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and Lovelace for this book. I've read everything that Lovelace has put out and have yet to be disappointed by any of it. I've never been a fan of poetry but Lovelace's work is what truly made me appreciate the genre. I recommend her books to anyone who comes into the library looking for contemporary poetry and will continue to do so!

I love love love amanda lovelace previous books and this one is also really good, like really really good !

I read it in one sitting but I will re read it again and again

She talks about grief and I recognize myself in some of it.

It was beautiful, magical, lyrical and yes sometimes sad but a good kind of sad.
It was perfect and I cannot recommended you enough to read it

I loved the illustrations too, it really bring something more unique

to drink coffee with a ghost is Amanda Lovelace's second installment in her things that h(a)unt series. While I didn't love the first collection in this duology, mostly because I didn't connect with any of the poems, this one was the opposite, some of them really resonated with me and made me feel lots of emotions.
While "to make monsters out of girls" talks about abusive relationships, this one talks about familial relationships, especially about Amanda's mother and sister.
Overall this was a very good poetry collection but I just didn't love it as much as I love her "women are some kind of magic" series.

Just like all the other Amanda Lovelace books/collections, "to drink coffee with a ghost" is an adventure, a journey to self-discovery and self-forgiveness. In this three-part collection, she brought me to a story full of anger, doubts, insecurities, grief, and trauma. This was also a hard read for me. Thank you for the trigger warnings! This also shelled out a lot of emotions for me. The poems, although most of them are addressed to a mother, were relatable and can be replaced by someone/people we all wanted to forgive, Someone we all love despite the awful things they've done to make us who we are today.

I love how the book portrayed forgiveness - a process that doesn't come with a manual or a three-step process. Because forgiving others and forgiving ourselves (and finding ourselves in the process) is never easy.

Here are some favorites from this book:

"what do we do
with all the things
we need to say
to someone
we'll never see
again?
-maybe that's why i write."

"they said to me ,
you can't be angry at your mother. you
can't be angry at your dead mother.
you can't be angry.

i wanted to take the floor & scream,
my trauma doesn't get wiped away
just because it's inconvenient for
you to love someone who was also
capable of causing others pain.
-hard feelings."

"i don't necessarily think you should have to
forgive those who have mistreated you in
the most life-defining ways. forgiveness us
something sacred. however, i would like to
think i could forgive you, if given the
opportunity. i would like to think you would
give me reason to.
-here's hoping."

"you are not
a disappointment.

you are not
the culmination

of what people
expect of you.
-life is not a pass or fail."

This was absolutely beautiful.
This was my first time reading anything from Amanda Lovelace, but it will most definitely not be my last. The heartbreaking story of her relationship with her mother, and then her lovely relationship with her sister, ugh, it just got me right in all the feels.

This book hit me very hard. Amanda Lovelace wrote beautiful poems that made me full of emotions. I had to pause couple of times. I highly recommend this one to everyone. 4.5/stars

Amanda Lovelace continues to be a special writer to me. I enjoy her poetry and I find that she has always written about the human experience and interpersonal relationships with poise and raw emotion. This book was much more about female relationships; that of the narrator and her mother, the narrator and her sister, etc., and that was a really gorgeous book to read as someone who has a mother and sister, in which I've struggled in my relationships. Mothers and daughters are often strained, so I am sure this resonates not just with me but with lots of daughters and mothers alike. I will always recommend Amanda's books to my female friends.

Amanda Lovelace is one of my favorite modern poets, and to drink coffee with a ghost doesn't disappoint. Her language is sharp and soothing all at the same time, and she does such a wonderful job of getting right to the core of the reader's emotion without it being unnecessarily melodramatic. to drink coffee with a ghost reads as a love letter to girls who have complicated relationships with their mothers, thereby having complicated relationships with themselves and those around them. Some of these poems hit me deep down in a way I haven't been reached before, and it's always such a raw, exhilarating moment when it happens.

I highly recommend this collection. For girls with complicated relationships, girls who have to learn to love themselves, or even just people who love beautiful language, to drink coffee with a ghost will not disappoint.

*A huge thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review*
4.5/5 stars
Maybe my favorite collection of poetry that Lovelace has come out with thus far. Poetry is something very deep and personal, not only to the author, but the reader as well. I think that my favorites of hers (the princess saves herself in this one & to drink coffee with a ghost) are the ones that I relate to the most, and I am just so thankful work like this exists. Beautiful, haunting, emotional, and lyrical, Lovelace's work will continue to be my favorite in contemporary poetry. Please read it when it comes out on September 17th, 2019!

This was a great read. Amanda Lovelace wrote a wonderful book that may make the reader pause to analyze their own life once or twice. The book is full of raw emotions: grief, hurt, hatred, love and forgiveness. I especially appreciated the theme of the book and the illustrations. The title is very appropriate for this read.

Review: To Drink Coffee With A Ghost
Author: Amanda Lovelace
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Publication Date: September 17, 2019

This is the finale of Bestselling Poetess Amanda Lovelace’s duology “things that haunt”.
The first, ‘To Make Monsters Out Of Girls,” focused on being in a toxic relationship.
This one is about the loss of her mother and their very complicated relationship.
When I was younger, poetry was like an extension of me. It was the THING. That thing that took the tired jumbled tangle of inexpressible emotions and made sense of them.
I knew it’d be risky business for me to dig in to this topic.
See, what makes death so hard is the ABSENCE of that person. So, while my mother is very alive, I’ve spent the majority of my life feeling like she has been dead.
As I read through these pages I realized that I had experienced nearly every situation she had described.
Difficult relationship? What little relationship I had with my (non-custodial) mother was conditional and manipulative. The author speaks of her contradictory feelings of wanting approval and almost idolizing her mother, no matter how torturous and toxic she knows it is. And her relationship with her sister; how much they had to step up and take on the grown up roles for each other.
This book runs the entire gamut of emotions. From the resentment to grief, to the acceptance, to moving forward.
It was written for the lost girls like me. The ones like my sister who had to put our mother to bed because she fell asleep sitting up smoking a cigarette or trying to get a spoonful of food to her mouth. Our mother is no longer very much mother. She’s more pills than mother now.
Amanda Lovelace has that rare gift of saying a multitude of things in just a few short sentences.
If you’ve never read her work, I highly recommend it.
And this one was so beautiful and touching to me. It’s ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5 stars, no doubt. Sad I don’t have a copy on my shelf right now!!
#ToDrinkCoffeeWithAGhost #Netgalley #Goodreads

It's a shame this didn't warrant a higher rating from me-- the concept here is very good, a series of poetry made up of what she'd say in a conversation with the ghost of her mother. The reason I think it didn't work better for me is that it largely rehashes a lot of the ideas of her previous poetry collections and also she makes some stylistic choices that are very pop poetry that I don't necessarily love. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
I'd probably give a higher score by a star if I wasn't already familiar with Lovelace's poetry.

BOY OH BOY DID I ABSOLUTELY FIND MY NEW FAVORITE POETRY COLLECTION/SERIES.
I read to make monsters out of girls earlier this week and when I saw this on netgalley, I snatched it so quick. I personally really loved lovelace's second poetry collection in her first series, but felt so so about the other two. I absolutely LOVED this one and the one before it. I really feel like amanda is just going to keep getting better and better because this collection is hands down one of the top 3 best poetry collections I've ever read. Her writing is so unique in the sense that she's writing about life and experiences but it feels like you're reading a fairytale or fantasy book. I loved the themes this touched on and really felt the emotion behind it and found myself so connected, even though it wasn't something I've experienced. I also love how all of her books include trigger warnings as I think that's so important. So if you're into modern poetry and love the feel of a fantasy story, I cannot recommend this enough!

This hit me with all the feels. I don't think I can leave a really good review on this because I have so many emotions. Some of these poems definitely hit home as I lost my mother to an incurable illness, some of them (poems) made me incredibly emotional.

I do appreciate that Amanda does put trigger warnings in the beginning of all her poetry collections.

Thank you to netgalley for giving me to opportunity to read this before its publication date.

"the ways in which they suffer themselves is not an excuse to make you suffer in return." Amanda Lovelace

I want to thank NetGalley for giving me a ARC of Amanda Lovelace's new poetry anthology for an honest review.

It must have been a real journey for Amanda to write this book let alone having to go through it all. This book is a journey for the reader as well as we have all grieved for someone. When I read about her mother's cancer, it inspired me to finally write about the loss of my Grandma. This book has helped me in my own grieving process. I think Amanda is very brave to have been able to publish this book out into the world for everyone to see. People will connect with it because it is about something so real. Death of a loved one is the worst part of our existence but sharing our grief will help others like this book has helped me.

I thought the art in this book was beautiful and worked perfectly with the poetry. Each chapter focused on a different part of the grieving process and explored feelings of guilt and love and hate. The last chapter showed Amanda's strength and I am so happy that I get to read her work. She is an inspiration to everyone. Being able to go through the things that she has but still living her life to the fullest is amazing. A Brilliant poetry anthology that I recommend all to read!