Dear Girl is a collection of poems talking about strength, resilience, heartbreaks, wounds, and relationships. They are divided into five parts based on their themes. The book is around 100 pages long, making it a quick read. I loved the poems that talk about the importance of gender equality in the current world. The poems provide a definitive yet necessary push to the girls and women thriving in the 21st century. The poems are hard-hitting and impactful. I'm sure each one of the readers will find something relatable in them. A great pick for those looking for an easy yet meaningful read. I coupled this ebook with the audiobook version which made the experience even more worthwhile.

I honestly loved this poetry book. It was empowering and at the same time spoke what every woman's heart whispers.

There are poems about how a woman has always been stereotyped and how her spirit has always been questioned and ground down.
Then there are poems where a father is adored because he let her daughter fly high.
Then there are poems on a woman's agony.

It covered all those feelings and fights that a woman has to go through in her lifetime.

Recommended to poetry lovers. It will be a soothing read.

The poems were excellent OMG. She touched on so many important issues while crafting such exquisite poems and reminding women and girls everywhere of their power. She talked about the male gaze, the disparity in upbringing of girls and boys, body positivity, love, loss, heartbreak, and female empowerment.
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One of the most important and recurring themes in so many poems in this collection is that women learn to find, use, and love their voices. There has been no better time to dismantle the culture of silence than now, as all of our voices are needed to call out and fight against the oppressive force and nature of patriarchy.
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This is aimed at and focused on girls, but it features sections aimed at boys, fathers, brothers, and sisters as well. There’s a call for accountability across board, and she does this in so many beautiful ways.
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I recommend this collection for everyone. It’s so great. All of the praise and stars to this amazing poet!

Name: Dear Girl
Poetess: Aija Mayrock
Genre: Poetry, Feminism
Rating: 5/5
Review:
This is a collection of beautiful poetries which deals with the silence, truth, resilience shared by all womankind. It touches the string of thoughts which connects us all.
Empowering, Exciting and Enticing poetries which will touch you to the innermost core. One of the most feminist poetry book I have ever read. Her words are simple yet so breathtakingly truthful. She speaks for all of us, she touches those topics which we have considered norms.
Her poems are truly "a love letters for all woman out there" as she said. This book is amazing and thought-provoking. I liked the whole theme of this book. I really appreciate the poetess for her message to all womankind. We are all sisters, after all.

I listened to the audiobook as well as followed by reading the ebook. This book is such a beautiful book. So empowering, so touching. It encompasses things women go through as children and as adults. Aija Mayrock says in this book from time to time that we shouldn't lose our childlike wonder while we grow wiser and deeper and I felt that.

While the poems might feel like something you have seen before or read before if you read poetry a lot, there are more important because the words are things we never should forget. This book is reaffirming in the extraordinary that a woman is, the magic in our eyes and lessons we never should forget.

This is that book you should get to when you are weary of fighting as a woman, as a person, the poems will strengthen you. I loved every bit of this book and Aija Mayrock's voice in the audiobook was a joy. Strong. I enjoyed listening to her.

4/5 stars
I thought this was a beautiful "love letter to the sisterhood" as described by the poet. It was an empowering read that affirmed how if we are to value ourselves and each other, we have to stop demoting ourselves at the behest of the patriarchy. Should we continue to do that, along with putting down and competing with fellow sisters in a degrading way, we are only dismantling the entire women's movement that has come a long long way.
The collection speaks a lot of how we need to reverse the ways in which our rights and bodies have been disenfranchised. I also thought it was very accepting of all the differences that make us unique as well as all the trauma we have undergone. There is this particular poem I really liked and it goes as:
There is no such thing as weak women,
only women
who have not stepped into
their power.

Step into it.
The world is waiting"

Overall, a beautiful read that incorporates every aspect of being a girl and a woman and especially the inheritance of trauma from mothers and how it is a cycle going on and on, to go on and on unless we do something about it.

Do pick it up!

This is a book about poems that truly hits home. It is filled with empowerment, understanding, sisterhood, and love, this is a book about girls and women, and the resilience within. I was absolutely touched by these poems and found them to be something that should be read by every young woman. This book is a love letter to the beauty and power within girls and I found it to be absolutely amazing.

5 Stars (I received an e-arc from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review)

Dear Girl was an amazing poetry collection and I wish that I had read this much earlier. The motif of dear girl is used multiple times giving advice to young women about the harsh realities in this world. I strongly urge everyone to read this collection and I don’t want to give a lot of details, just go read this collection.

I wrote to find the answers,
instead
I found myself.

Dear girl is a collection of short poems on female empowerment by a young new poet. This is her first collection, and as such it is dealing with very urgent and important matters. It is a part of a stream of feminist poetry for girls, which I can only applaud. However, the poems were rather simple at times and I thought they could have been better if they had been a bit more subtle at times. Part of poetry for me is not only the message but also the beautiful phrasing of things, and the latter was a bit missing in some of poems.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This poetry collection written by Aija Mayrock is a true hymn to feminism.  Her poems tell us to fly high and be proud of ourselves as women.  The author talks about gender (in)equality and how that affects our daily lives.  This collection is both beautiful and powerful!

This was an enjoyable read. After reading this one, I immediately wanted to read Aija's other book, The Survival Guide to Bullying. I really like Aija's writing style, and would love to read anything else she puts out.

I really enjoyed this one, I gave it a four out of five star. It was a bit receptive at times, but I liked them still. I didn't connect to all of them but the ones I did really hit me. They also gave me flashbacks to things in my life.

Dear Girl is a marvellous collection—its opening lines begin: "The words that pour from my lips now / come from lips that were sealed / far too many years" and this momentum continues through each page. This book reads as if Mayrock were to open her personal journal and recite it as poetry. It's vulnerable and authentic and so deeply emotional that the reader can't help but empathise. This is the book I wish I could send back in time to my younger self as both an encouragement and a powerful cry for strength.

*longer review to come on Pencils & Pages*

I received a complimentary advance review copy of #DearGirl from #NetGalley

I think the overall messages were very important and powerful - uplifting without being aggressive, validating without close-minded wallowing, personal and supportive despite being words from a faceless stranger. This is not my preferred style of poetry and some parts felt as if a normal sentence or two just had some line breaks added in to make it a poem, but I would still highly recommend this collection to people who like the poetry style and/or who want to read a strong book about the themes of womanhood..

I just didn't connect with this book as much as I have in the past with other feminist poetry. I'm sure others will love it though!

While there are a few standout poems in this collection, I did not feel drawn to the entirety of this poet's work as a whole. It is a deeply personal look into what it is like to be a woman, which is beautiful and necessary now more than ever. The style for some of these poems just wasn't for me.

This was amazing! Such nice poetry. The journey of the girl is written as such an empowering process and it made me feel so proud and strong to be a woman! This is so well done I can't even put it into words. I think every girl and woman should read this because there is a lot of stuff happening in the world every day that makes women feel like they aren't worth as much as men are and we aren't treated equally in a lot of situations. But this really made my day!
It was poetic enough to be really deep but not too poetic that you couldn't understand what was happening. It has really clear messages with a lot of empowering elements.

Firstly I would like to thank NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for an eARC for an honest review.

I hadn't heard of Aija Mayrock before finding her book on NetGalley and then went on to find her on Instagram and fell in love with her spoken words and everything that she stands for. Her first book being focused on bullying is one topic that has pushed her into her success as she is speaking for the voiceless. 'Dear Girl' is a beautiful debut poetry book that encourages and builds up women. It feels like Aija is focused on seeing what sometimes feels like we can't put words to. It isn't a book that shames men or feels like an attack but a push for equality and speaking the truth and how we as women have to live.

'Dear Girl' is compiled of five chapters that focus' of different topics. Summarised as the truth, freedom, healing, love and sisterhood. I have to say that my favourite piece has to be 'The Truth About Being a Girl' because it is such a beautifully long piece that I read as a spoken word and went on to find her actual spoken word and loved it even more. It really was an empowering read and I hope to read more from Aija in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.

I think what I loved the most about this was, I don't know how else to say it, natural the poems felt, quite real to not only us contemporary women as one would think. To me, that's one of the things that makes a good poem, the ability to relate to all, not only one specific person (though there's nothing wrong with that), and she did that.

What a nice debut collection of poems! When I found out that this was a debut I was quite shocked, I hope I get to see more from her.

I don't know if anyone else thought this but I got the feeling that the poems in this book would make incredible songs.

I don't know what I'm doing;
all that I do know is
I chase what sets my soul on fire
to the ends of earth,
till the end of time.

At its best, modern poetry can illuminate current issues while packing a punch. At its worst, it overuses the enter key. I don't want to say that "Dear Girl" is the latter, but, in my opinion, it never really rises to the former either.

I agree with the feminist issues raised in this collection of poetry; that much was never in question. The question is, really, if just reiterating the views is enough... to make a difference? For this book to count as 'art'? To...? I'm not sure it is. The book is full of buzzwords from 'trauma' to 'slut-shaming', all used sincerely and in appropriate contexts, but I never really felt that it elevated them to something more than just the basic messages I could just as easily read in my Twitter feed. There's a certain paradox in a poetry book containing relatively prosaic language to send messages of greatness, instead of great words illuminating the everyday.

There's also something about the "Who runs the world? Girls!" and "everything you do is enough" messages of this book, not coupled with any actionable steps to further such messaging, that rubbed me the wrong way. But maybe you need that kind of blind optimism from 25-year-olds who really will take over the world. This 30-something mostly just felt old while bitterly chuckling at a lot of it.

2.5/5 stars, rounded up.