Rachel Wiley was not lying when they say there is an exploration of anger. It pours off the page and seeps into you. I had to take quite a few breaks while reading this collection. For some reason I just didn’t connect with poetry the way I thought I would and wanted. Many of the issues dealt with in Revenge Body I live through everyday, but as I said for some reason there was a disconnect for me.

I received an ARC of this book and I am writing a review without prejudice and voluntarily. I am sorry to say that I did not connect with the poetry in this book. You might, so please do not take my opinion as anything other than a reader who did not make a connection.

Was an ok read, alot of triggers about body awareness, which resonates with me on a personal level. Could relate to some if not most of the poems.

This was a lovely book of poetry. I really enjoyed it and read it in one sitting. The cover artwork and title are eye-catching and unique. If you are a fan of Rupi Kaur, Amanda Lovelace, and Courtney Peppernell, you are bound to enjoy this book.

The book has three sections, and each section provides different insight into the author's experiences and feelings. It is bold, honest, and relatable. The book is empowering, inspiring the reader to go on a journey of self-love and to celebrate who they are.

I look forward to reading more of the author's work in the future. I plan to purchase a copy of the book for my classroom library so others can enjoy it too. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this title.

This is an intensely personal collection of poems dealing primarily with body perception (fat phobia), Mental Health (depression), Race and Gender, and Mother/Daughter relationships (the bad kind). I really enjoyed the rawness of the works and the accessibility of the concepts. There is an honesty in the straightforwardness of the text that captivated me. That is not to say that there is no lyricism or art in the poetry, just that it feels like it just says what it says rather than wrap it in a blanket of pseudo-literary prowess. As in any collection, some poems were more impactful to me than others, but I did feel that this was overall a very strong collection.

My favorite poems were the title poem, "All the Pills I Tried Before," "Ghost Me, I'll Write Your Eulogy," and, "Excuses."

This was a solid collection of poetry. As with any collection, some poems resonated more than others but I never felt unsatisfied. Some I immediately bookmarked to not forget as they touched a place I wanted articulated in a modern voice. This is my second Rachel Wiley poetry book and I know upon release I will likely purchase a copy following this ARC for a few friends.

I’ve never really been into poetry, up until last year I had never actually read any. This is my second poetry collection I’ve read and I really enjoyed it. The cover is really cool and grabs your attention before you even open the book, and the poetry inside matches. There wasn’t one that I didn’t like, but my top 5 were “Ode To The Invisible Girl”, “Handsome, Or In Which Neither Of Us Is The Man”, “Unbow Your Head Sister”, “Misguided Little Unforgivable Hierarchies”, and “Break Up With Your Mother, I’m Scarred”. This collection and each poem flowed really well; it explores themes of sexuality, mental health, childhood trauma, familial struggles, race, and body image. The author is unapologetically themselves and that really comes through in their poetry. I’m new to this kind of writing, and poetry in general, but I guess I’m a poetry person now!

*thanks to NetGalley for this book in exchange for a review*

I believe a poem should not just be a string of words thrown here and there to create a rhyme and leave it just at that.

I believe a poem should consist of words and rhyne that cuts deep into you and touch your wounds raw with pain.

That touches your memories, your being, your thoughts and emotions.

Rachel Wiley's Revenge Body pierced through my heart and came out through my mouth as a blood flower. Red and alive. Just like fresh blood.

This book is medium through which she speaks to you, speaks to you about her pain and wounds, about her estranged mother, her abusive brother, her skin folds, her fleshy nooks and cranies, her insecurities, her mental health and the world she lives in.

The entirety of the book touched me, no punched me at my gut or my heart and yes, I liked it.

I liked it because I heard my own voice through her poems, for once it felt it was me who speaking through her poems.

It was she who was in me and spoke of my pain and my emotions and my thoughts.

I liked all of her poems but some of them left a taste on my tongue. I have put them in the picture slides so swipe them to read and get the tang of her poems on your tongue.

You'll like it.
You'll love it.

Absolutely recommended.

White feminism is as feminist as Dr. Pepper is a doctor

First off, A huge thank you to Button Poetry for sending an arc my way through NetGalley.

I discovered Rachel Wiley at 3 am one night and fell in love with her words, this book brought that back out tenfold. The same intense feelings and the connection to the poems.

This book has some absolutely BEAUTIFUL POEMS, I liked the structures and the writing of many of them but very few of them are actually remarkable...some of them felt way too long and their writing felt like something out of a teenager's diary.

Overall I really enjoyed this collection and would totally revisit some of these poems.

4 stars. This is a solid poetry collection that packs an emotional punch. It's a bit grittier and the collection itself is bite sized and less than a 100 pages. However, there are some wonderful poems hidden in here filled with emotional turmoil, longing, and wanting to find your place. TW for eating disorders. This is a collection I definitely recommend. Review to come.

Revenge body by Rachel Wiley.
Revenge Body is Rachel Wiley's third collection of poetry, full of the sharp wit and bold honesty we know and love from Rachel. Wiley invites her readers to join her on a journey filled with righteous anger, Black identity, magic, mental health, navigating maternal relationships, and the love and loss that comes from a breakup.
A good collection of poetry. 3*.

Rachel Wiley's simultaneously bold and tender voice jumps off the page. I read this book because of how much I love her spoken word poetry, and this collection did not disappoint. Her poetry illustrates her pursuit of peace and a sense of home while grappling with fatphobia, racism, grief, mental health and heartbreak as a fat, queer, biracial woman. Her poetry brings heartbreaking and loving memories to life. This poetry collection is deeply personal and vulnerable, and I found myself connecting to her refusal to continue to make herself smaller and deny herself the scope of emotions and experienced this life has to offer. Rachel Wiley's poems are confrontational while carrying a visceral ache to be seen and understood.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Thank you Button Poetry and NetGalley for the advance copy of Revenge Body!

Not really my taste at all but I know for a fact I will recommend this to several others because I can acknowledge the subject matter.

Wiley's poems about her relationship with her family and being a biracial woman flourish in revenge body

Fans of Rupi Kaur would enjoy this.

also there are certain line breaks in a few poems that seem unintentional and made for aesthetics.

It was fine.

I would like to preface this review by saying it brings me absolutely no joy to rate Revenge Body so low. While I admire Wiley's brave endeavor of opening up and making art out of less than fortunate experiences, I just wasn't able to connect with this work.

Like others have stated, the biggest drawback of this collection of poems is the lack of proper execution. In her poems, Wiley tackles such as trauma, queerness, femininity, and fatphobia among other topics. These are, of course, powerful and sensitive subject matters. Unfortunately, due to the lack of proper execution, a lot of these poems simply fell short and felt unfulfilling. For the most part, I understood and empathized with Wiley's experiences, however, I was left wanting more and not necessarily in a good way. For as powerful as the subject matters are, and for how strongly the poet felt, I would have also thought the poems would have scratched more than just the surface.

Again, like others have said, if you enjoy tumblr or instagram poetry, you will likely enjoy Revenge Body.

I some times find extremely difficult to rate books. Poetry books the most. Because, how can you give a rating to someone else's feelings? I know it can be based in more technical and objective aspects, but my opinion about books it's always subjective. So I don't know how to say how many stars I would give this one, because every of these poems encapsulated the memories, feelings and point of view of someone else. But I also like that there's more and more books talking about this stuff, showing the emotions that are often ignored, from the ones who talk about body image, body hair and self esteem to the ones that were more personal to the author.

Thank you for an arc of this in exchange for an honest review! This book caught my attention due to its cover. The poetry inside, however, didn't appeal to me. Though there are great themes included and I appreciate the author's efforts, I'm not a fan of the style or more "modern" poetry. It may be more enjoyable for you if you're a fan of Tumblr poetry.

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 (3.5 stars)

Wiley touches on experiences with mental health hardships, her queer and biracial identities, childhood trauma, familial relationships, and sexism with her prose. A vulnerable and honest collection of poems, minus the outdated Taylor Swift bashing. As with most poetry I read, I resonated with certain poems and not others. For the most part, the subject matter was deeply relatable, and I was able to connect with it as a poetry consumer who has experienced many of the same life circumstances. Fans of Amanda Lovelace will enjoy this one.

Thank you to to NetGalley and Button Poetry for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for an honest review!

In this poetry collection, the author explores personal experiences relating to body image and fat shaming, race and being biracial, queer relationships, mental health, her relationship with her estranged mother, and other deeply personal topics.

I appreciated the openness and honesty revealed through these poems, as well as the creative use of language and poetic devices that many popular contemporary poets lack. Some poems also featured creative graphical arrangement of lines on the page, which further enhanced the reading experience.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC.

“What is yours will return to you with the tangles removed
and won’t that be lovely?
What doesn’t return was only ever visiting.”

Beautifully written poetry about mental health issues and what it mean to be black. My only issue with the book is that it isn't very long. I enjoyed the LGBTQ repersentation as well as the discussion of family relationships.

Wiley writes in a way that is familiar but unique at the same time. Her poems about her relationship with her mother were painfully relatable. She somehow finds a way to make unhappy words still sound beautiful. I did not, however, love the way in which some of the poems were formatted. Some of the line breaks felt awkward and made the poems seem more amateur than they were.

Her poems on fatness were some of my favorites. In a world in which skinny is still considered beautiful and fat is… not, it’s hard to be someone who isn’t a size 2 and love your body completely. However, the body positivity movement can sometimes make those of us who do struggle with our bodies feel shameful for having negative thoughts. Wiley is able to be real about the fact that there are two sides to this - we can both love our bodies and also hate our bodies, at the same time, for different reasons.
“How nice it would be to trust my body to love with the same ease
I trust it to the water,
to lie back in it,
let it hold me,
and float.”