Title provided via Netgalley for honest review.

I don't quite remember what prompted me to wish for this book, because I don't like poetry, especially modern poetry. It doesn't feel or read the same. There's less relevance in this than the traditional poets and literary authors I've read in high school or college.

This may be the thing some other nineteen year old needs in their life, but I can say it wasn't for me. There were some small pieces here and there I thought were very enlightening and thought-provoking, but ultimately this just felt very disconnected and uninspiring.

This collection was honestly a little forgettable. It's broken up into six parts and the first three or four read very repetitively. The poetry is pretty good but it's just not really what I like in poetry, although there are a few quotes I'll be saving.

3.75 stars ⭐

"I've been damaged and I use men as a bandage. But they always fall away the next morning leaving my wound exposed."

This started so strong, it was like she was reading my mind. I read it at the right time of my life and I thank her for that.
But there were many instances that it felt too personal (i know that's basically what a poem is but hear me out), so personal that there was no way that I could relate unless I was the one she was referring to.
Overall, it's an awesome poetry collection that you should check out!

I liked this collection, many poems resonated with me. The title of each section fits with the content within. Some of the language could've been stronger, there's the occasional filter word or weak verb. However, overall I enjoyed this collection.

⭐️ 4 / 5 Stars ⭐️

I thoroughly enjoyed this poetry collection. it is a modern collection and the file I was given by the publisher didn’t properly break up the poems, so I was kind of just guessing when one started an another ended. But saying that, it was easy to tell with a change in theme or voice.

It touches a lot on growing up, over coming these hard challenges we face and mental health, but felt it done so in a very encouraging way. It didn’t feel like a “dark” or harrowing read, and had quite a few poems on love and travel.

The writing style, I found, is incredibly beautiful and I just became swept away in Mackenzie Campbell’s words. I highlighted so many sections and want to own a physically copy so I can note and highlight so many more. Her words are truly breath taking and there’s just so many amazing quotes that I just want to write everywhere and anywhere - any space that I can find I want to fill up with quotes from this collection.

I enjoyed reading this collection of poetry as I felt a connection to the author immediately by the writing style alone. How she managed to reach out to audience and address the similarities with her comparisons of feelings. One thing that did stand out and bother me a little though was the over use of metaphors. It felt that there was too many of these so at one point it did become a bit repetitive and less meaningful.

This was poetry in its purest form. As I’m also nearly nineteen, a lot of these poems were very special to me. It is about heartbreak, self love,... which is all so very important.

I really wanted to like it, and I did like a lot of it, but I didn't always feel the emotion I think I was supposed to feel. It might just have been the timing that was off.. and I really want to reread it, because I really think it could resonate with me at the right moments.

Thank you to Netgalley, publisher and author for a copy of this book.

I was underwhelmed by this collection. I couldnt connect with the poems.

Poetry is something you either connect with or you don't. It's highly subjective and peoples thoughts and opinions on each piece will always differ and make readers think and feel different things.
With that being said some in this collection we hard to connect with whereas others were very easy to. The overall feel I got from the collection was it was if the author has scrolled through social media and encompassed all that she'd found in a book which ends up being a very nice and pleasant read.

An ARC of this novel was sent to me by NetGalley for reviewing purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I tried so far to like Mackenzie's poetry, but I felt like a lot of it fell short on me because I am unable to relate to it,

Actual rating: 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4)

This is the second book I've read by Makenzie and to be honest, I liked it more than the other one!

Although there were some poems I didn't like that much, there were some that I felt connected with, and also felt her deep emotion.

This book is divided in 6 sections, and in my opinion, the first 2 and the last 2 were the ones I enjoyed the most

I really enjoy Makenzie Campbell's aesthetic. From the cover, to the art in the book, to the way her poetry is constructed, there's a lot of potential.

But this just fell very short for me. These were all metaphors and analogies that I've heard and seen before on Instagram & Facebook poetry pages. They were all your classic tropes: your chest being compared to caged birds, love being written in the stars, hearts being compared to growing flowers, watering dead relationships and expecting them to grow, etc etc. I truly feel as if the author went to a Facebook poems page, and took every photo and extended it into a poetry book. None of the poems (although there were some lines that were beautiful) truly surprised me, they were all very... predictable.

I am curious to see how this poet grows the older she gets. I feel that I really enjoy her style, but there is still some much needed growth in the content of her poems. I want to see her expand into uncharted territory, not one-line metaphors I've seen a bunch of 16 year-olds repost on my timeline. I will be keeping my eyes open for new work.

I am 19. Reading this I felt no connections at all with the writing and the experience the author was talking about. I understand not everyone experiences the same thing at the same age, but I wasn't expecting this to solely be about love/heartbreak. Also I feel like this was trying to be a selfhelp book while also being lyrical poetry.... Overall just not for me.

*eArc of Nineteen provided by Netgalley*

3.5/5 Stars
Another ARC provided by NetGalley, and another poetry book set to be released in March. I very much enjoyed the writing style, and personally liked the mix of shorter/longer poems. It sets a good pace while reading it, not too fast where you’re flying threw it and not too slow where you feel like it’s dragging; a happy medium. The first half of this collection is what I related to the most. Some of the poems even brought tears to my eyes, they were beautifully written. Especially reading this at 19, which is the same age the author wrote this about her transitioning into adulthood, made it a little more personable. As much as I loved the first half the second wasn’t for me. It started to delve into breakups, and heartbreak, and unfortunately started to get cheesy, and cliche in my opinion. Heartbreak is a topic that is overused in poetry, time, and time again. Just about every poetry book I read, it’s there written just about the same way too. Which in the end brought my overall rating down. I still really enjoyed it, and would recommend it!

I'm not nineteen anymore...

Book Review: Nineteen by Makenzie Campbell
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing
Release Date: 3rd March, 2020

Heartbreak. A topic that feels like it's been done to death. Can you still write about a break up, or losing someone in an original way? Or, maybe I'm now at an age where I've read a lot about it. I suppose at nineteen it's all still relatively new.

With that being said, it's important to note, before I review this book - I am not nineteen. You can add ten years to that and come somewhat close to my age. Therefore, this book is not something I feel I can relate to anymore, and honestly, it didn't evoke any feelings of the past.

Some areas of the poet's thoughts do come across as melodramatic and 'oh woe is me', but again, that's probably my bias because I'm not in the midst of teenage heartache. Really, I'm probably just bitter that I'm no longer nineteen, and I don't want to admit or accept that I'm getting old.

You may have guessed that the title; Nineteen reflects the poet's age when she wrote the book. It is about a specific time in a young person's life; a transition in to adulthood. Described as covering topics such as, 'heartbreak, love, loss, war, peace and healing' it seems that everyone should be able to relate. However, for me, that time has passed.

In order to find some connection with the poetry I did try to recall how I felt during a particularly difficult break-up. At twenty years old I remember that it felt dramatic at the time, but then the poet says she had, 'been in your life for months' and I can't help but cringe at the childishness. I think how I was with my teenage boyfriend for years.

Moving away from the subject matter, the book itself is well written. I would consider it more prose than poetry. It is a stream of consciousness; all the thoughts and feelings are poured onto the page. Saying that, this can make the structure erratic; the poet it flitting from one idea to the next without completing the thought. One minute she is discussing the metaphor of being in the 'passenger seat', therefore not feeling in control. The next sentence is a jarring turn to astrology.

Towards the end of the narrative we do revisit the car metaphor as she finds new love and becomes 'the driver'. It's that familiar, yet heart-warming message that all the broken hearted need to hear, 'you broke me in the worst way, but this pain bloomed into a blessing'; everything will be okay in the end. You could say it's an over-used trope, but at some point I guess it's something we all needed to hear, even if we didn't believe it at the time.

Obviously, poetry is a personal form of expressing an experience. I imagine it was very therapeutic to write. If you are living heartbreak right now and want to embrace and wallow in it, then this book could be for you.

Thanks to Central Avenue Publishing and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this e-arc.

This poetry collection was about loss, healing and finding your place in the world. I didn't really relate to the collection but I still loved these poems, Campbells poetry is soso beautiful and now I really want to get my hands on 2am thoughts!
There were many very inspiring poems on growth and healing which I wrote down quotes for! Overrall I feel very grateful that I was able to read an arc of this from NetGalley before it's release date, which is 3rd March 2020!
The only problem I had was the quality on my kindle, I struggled to tell where poems ended and started but apart from that I had an amazing experience with this poetry collection!

I don’t real a lot of poetry. I was excited to be able to read this book of poetry. It was very interesting.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own

Nineteen is a collection of poetry and prose written by Mackenzie Campbell, titled after the age at which she wrote it.

Overall, the writing was done well, especially for such a young author. My main problem was just that it didn’t evoke the emotion in me that is so critical for my enjoyment of poetry.

Modern poetry gets a bad rep, and I don’t want to be that person who reads it for the sake of hating and bashing it-condensing a whole genre into a single one star review. I want to preface this by saying that poetry is subjective and personal, which is part of the reason why I love it so much! Unfortunately, that makes it harder to find works I love- but when I do, it is like finding a diamond in the rough and very satisfying. My favourite of which so far being ‘Aphrodite Made Me Do It’ by Trista Mateer. (ironically heavily featuring some of things I say later in this review I don't like, primarily being narrated by the goddess of love herself.)

I am beginning to discover what works for me and what doesn't in modern poetry.
I have found that for me to enjoy poetry, it needs to have grit and depth. As a general rule that I don’t find poems centred around love, heartache or betrayal to hit the hardest. Instead, those focused on families, nostalgia, regrets, change and life lessons seem to be my favourite.

For example, the beginning of a poem from this collection that I loved with nostalgia as a main theme:

“Soon enough you’ll be thirty and wondering how the hell you got from here to there. You’ll look back at old pictures and swear that was just yesterday and then realise that yesterday was ten years ago."

But one I didn’t, focused on heartbreak was:

"You fool me each and every time into thinking you care
That maybe this time we could be the perfect pair
But then you open my message and don’t reply and leave me just wondering why…
I’m undeserving of love."

To me, this poem feels melodramatic, but lacking emotion. A strange combination I know, but that sums up my feelings for most of 'Nineteen'

Additionally, I tend to like longer poems as opposed to shorter.
Here are some examples of short ones that didn't connect with me.
Your smile is a
delicacy”

or

“I am enamoured
by the complexity
of your personality.”

Just because you click the enter button a couple of times does not turn a sentence into poetry. Again, I want to reiterate that poetry is a subjective thing, and if you find some hidden meaning in those words or it resonates with you- Im happy for you! To me though, they seem quite surface level and lazy.

I find it difficult to rate poetry, so I tend to go by how many poems I highlighted, that stood out to me. I think it is quite telling that I only highlighted 5. For context, this book is almost 200 pages with the majority of poems being on one page each.

I would still recommend this if you don't have some of the same problems I do- as it was objectively well done.

Thank you to Central Avenue Publishing for this ARC

Release Date: 3 March 2020

This book is hauntingly beautiful, and was such a heartwrenching read. The prose is delicate in a way that somehow also gets at some of the darkest, truest, hardest aspects of being a person who has known heartbreak. Though this is a small collection, it took me a while to page my way through due to its density and depth. I highly recommend this collection for anyone who has known the pain of love gone awry, who is looking to feel seen and heard.