I loved this poetry collection! I actually listened to it first (she reads it herself and did a great job) and then I decided to reread a physical copy so I could really absorb everything more and highlight the ones I wanted to be able to look back on.

I wasn't familar with Sophie Diener before this book but she writes in such an easy, relatable way so I'll definitely keep an eye out for her in the future. I used to write poetry when I was younger and this honestly reminded me of an elevated version of something I might have written. She really pulls you in.

Thank you St Martin's Griffin and Macmillan Audio for the review copies!

Thank you to Sophie Diener (author & narrator), Macmillan Audio, and Netgalley for this free advanced reviewer copy of "Someone Somewhere Maybe: Poems" for an honest review.

I love, love, love that poetry is starting to get its feet (and voice!) into audiobooks!

There's something intensely vulnerable and intimate about reading poetry already and then getting to hear the author read their work, it's even more so like sitting down to have an inside view of their beautiful world, life, and experience. This book was a gorgeous experience record of first love and first loss, how we fall into it, hurt from it, learn from it, and how it lingers with us through the rest of our lives.

Oh my gosh, I loved each poem and how they fit together as a complete work of art. This author was vulnerable and open to her hope, love, sadness, happiness, and reflection of her life. At the beginning of the book, she mentions writing has always helped her feel better. You can feel her emotions and healing in each poem. Even though this book is a collection of poems about the authors life, they are also worded in a way that I can think of a time when I has those same feelings. I am truly impressed by Sophie Diener and feel so lucky that I had the opportunity to review this masterpiece. Sophie, if you are a Swiftie, you wrote these poem with, what I like to call, the Taylor Swift pen.
I received the audiobook and with the music in the background and Sophie’s voice, it was such a beautiful listen!

<i>Someone, Somewhere, Maybe</i>, Sophie Diener’s debut poetry collection, features poems about the experience of being a young adult – first love, first heartbreak, grappling with identity, etc. Diener narrated the audiobook herself, which made the poems that much more powerful. The background music in the audiobook enhanced the listening experience. Her poetry gave me all the feels and were extremely relatable. This is a poetry book I would give to those who think they don’t like poetry to try to change their mind.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me an audio ARC of this book.

I rarely get audiobooks of poetry and I adored this one. Maybe because it was read to me, it gave it even more of a powerful punch.

This is a debut poetry collection by Sophie Diener. It is beautiful and real. It is about first love and loss. It is about changing and growing and self-worth. I kept thinking about all the 20 something-year-olds in my life that I would love to buy copy for!

This would be a great gift for that age group, but I enjoyed it in my 40s. It brought back memories and reminded me of my worth.

I really hate rating poetry, but if I had too, I'd give it a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25. I just think poetry is so subjective to the reader and where you are at that moment but I really enjoyed this one.

Thank you to @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for my advanced audio copy in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. Listened to this on audio, and the emotion the author puts into her words is stunning.

I feel weird giving poetry anything less than 5 stars, because I don’t think the way someone tells their own experiences and stories and emotions should ever be criticized or judged.

Regardless of this, I think this poetry was very simple. I don’t think people who listen to poetry a lot and are more experienced with it would enjoy this because it seems very amateur. I don’t think this is my type of poetry overall, as I enjoy Narrative and blank verse poetry mostly! But this was still a nice quick listen.

Overall I enjoyed this! Beautifully written and spoken poetry.

I received this one on audiobook and it was narrated by the author. I enjoyed this poetry - it was written from a younger point of view (by younger I mean college/new adult). It explores concepts of growth and heartache and finding yourself. Overall enjoyable and took me on a trip down memory lane.

Beautifully written like a warm blanket that wraps you in comfort. This book of poetry transports you to a time when your heart was broken and yet healed at the same time. Stunning work!

I don't typically read poetry, but I saw the final poem on Sophie Diener's tiktok and knew i wanted to request this book!

I loved the themes and simplicity of these poems; many themes revolved around being comfortable with who you are and not apologizing for who you are. I think my favorite poem was Idyllic.

Beautiful poems, musings, and lots of good reminders of self love and strength.

Not every beginning has the intended ending and we grow from the doors we shut and the new ones we open

I will be buying this for my poetry collection. Excited to see the illustrations and I look forward to her next published work.

Poetry feels like connecting with another despite many possible differences, and Someone Somewhere Maybe by Sophie Diener gave me that much needed kinship.

I love poetry as an audiobook since it feels like you're at a live reading, and that's exactly how listening to this felt. Diener reading her own passages added even more depth and emotion to her words. I loved the added music behind the narration, how it changed with each work, and how each piece of instrumentals seemed to correspond to the tone of each poem.

This poetry took me back to a younger version of myself, to that adolescent version that only age and nostalgia can remember. This poetry met me where I currently am, to what I am currently feeling, this transition I am on the cusp of. This poetry made me project into the future to what I want our daughter to be, to know, and to always remember.

My favourite poems were:
Feelings
Don't Be A Stranger
Have Hope
October 5
I Try My Best
Expectations
Know And Love
The Next Five Minutes
A Poem For The People I Love
The Life I Dream Of
Be Kind To Yourself

There is angst and love and longing and yearning and sadness and mental health struggles and optimism and rain... and each poem was so beautiful.

Thank you NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, St. Martin's Griffin and Macmillan Audio for the complimentary copies to read, listen to and review.

This collection of poetry is so accessible. I didn't feel like I needed to decode each line; it said exactly what it meant, and it gave me such a pull into my own memories of heartbreak and first loves. It was short and sweet, perfect for somebody who wants to try modern poetry. I enjoyed listening to the author read her own poems because I felt her emotions come through.

Thank you to Negalley, author, and publisher!

A poetry book onove, heartbreak, loss, and self worth, Sophie Dinener does a great job narrating. I always love when authors narrate books from their own experiences, it makes it feel more intimate.

Overall I enjoyed this audiobook, but there were times and stories that felt hard for me to relate too. As someone newer to poetry scene though, this did not disappoint and I’ll recommend to friends.

This was a lovely poetry collection, very romance/breakup focused, which wasn't really what I was expecting, but it was still an enjoyable book. I always appreciate when an audiobook, particularly something like poetry, is read by the author, I think it makes it resonate.

“ Sunday dies and Monday breathes, and faith lives in the in-between.”

It’s been a while since I read a book of poetry. I tend to want to but put them off for other genres. Thankfully the mood struck me to read some poems and the next thing I knew, I had read through the whole book. These are poems of remembrance- mostly of old loves. Sophie Diener’s words spoke to me and I hope she continues to put her work out into tue world.

Rating:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Read if you like:
Poetry
Reflections on life

I enjoyed reading SOMEONE SOMEWHERE MAYBE by Sophie Diener! These poems focus on young love, first heartbreak, self identity and the ups and downs of being a young woman. It’s really cool that there’s illustrations throughout this book by Chloe Purpero. My fave poems are I Hope Today Is Kind to You and Lose Something. I also listened to the audiobook narrated by the author and it was nice to hear her read her own poems.

I’ve never been a fan of modern freestyle poetry because it’s straightforward (what you see is always what you get), it’s filled to the brim with cliches, and likewise it lacks originality in every line. <i>Someone Somewhere Maybe</i> is largely no exception.

The poems in this collection are often shallow, akin to the kind of “poetry” that is just throwaway lines the writer hastily typed into their Notes app, hoping to include in a larger work someday. It feels lazy because, clearly, that larger work never panned out, so they threw that line on the page, added a couple line breaks, and called it a poem. <i>Someone Somewhere Maybe</i> feels a lot like that kind of poetry.


<b>LITERARY DEVICES</b>

There are, however, a few moments in this collection where Diener employs literary devices to great effect, offering a stunning play on words that takes you off guard.

“You told me I can’t take a joke,
And I was overreacting.
My birthday gift was thick skin,
but I don’t remember asking.”

That third line is a shining example of the few times Diener did this wonderfully. The issue with this is that it isn’t consistent in this collection. Gut-punching metaphors like the one listed above are few and far in between.

Diener largely relies on scant amounts of imagery and the occasional parallelism in between addressing her exes and describing how they have wronged her in the past or broken her heart. In the end, literary devices are necessary to take Diener’s poetry to the next level, and they just aren’t adequately employed in this collection.


<b>RHYTHM AND FLUIDITY</b>

While the rhythmic delivery via the audiobook in Diener’s own words was flawless, I must say that after writing the above passage down and reading it back on my own, the lines get clunky toward the end, lacking fluidity. This is something I suspected at times while listening to Diener’s narration; she often uses a contrived rhythm while speaking that doesn’t feel natural, leading me to believe a lot of the poems exhibit this issue.


<b>THEMES</b>

Thematically, Diener writes about romantic heartbreak and being mistreated in a relationship. While she is at her best writing the murky underbelly of her romantic entanglements (the mistreatment of her by her exes), much of what she writes has already been written a thousand times, by a thousand other writers. There is barely an attempt to reimagine ways to put these thoughts on the page—often no literary devices in sight. It is cliche after cliche on the page, often written like she tore pages out of a teenager’s cringeworthy diary.


<b>FINAL THOUGHTS</b>

That is probably my overall issue with this collection. It truly does feel like diary entries (interspersed with line breaks) from a young woman who has had her heart broken. There is nothing poetic about most of what is written. The speaker in each poem often addresses the “you” that is her ex and asks them questions or accuses them of the harm they caused. Alternatively, the speaker addresses the “you” that is herself, or her readers, and gives them uplifting words of encouragement. Rife with cliches and lacking in literary devices, rhythm, sentence fluency, and unique thematic revelations, this feels like an open letter more than a poetry collection. Ultimately, adding line breaks to a pretty sentence does not a poem make. So this just didn’t work for me.


<b>AUDIOBOOK REVIEW</b>

With all this said, however, the audiobook is well worth a listen if you can find it at your local library, or if this kind of poetry interests you. I’ve never listened to an audiobook poetry collection, so perhaps they’re all like this, but it was really cool to hear the words of the author performed by the actual author. It’s such a rare and special treat when this happens (see: the <i>Legends & Lattes</i> series and <i>Thank You for Listening</i>). In this instance, quiet ambient mood music played as Diener recited her poetry. It was a unique audio treat!


<b>Overall Rating:</b> 1 star


<i>A big thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, Macmillan Audio, for providing me with an advanced copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review!</i>

Absolutely inspiring! So calming and relatable. I loved this! This is such a nice refreshing poetic voice. Please keep writing Sophie Diener!

Poetry that is done emotively and with feeling using common words and sequencing is an art form. There is such beauty in the simplicity of these poems. Where emotions are more toward the forefront over complexity.

I listened to the audio-version of this; it was really pleasant to hear from the author and have the underlying music compositions paired to them. Some poems swirl with sighs of realism and relatability.

Hoping to see more from this author in the future and wishing them a warm debut.

Much gratitude to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for the advanced Audio copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Thank you #NetGalley and #MacmillanAudio for the chance to read this poetry collection in exchange for an honest review.

I have loved reading and listening to poetry since I was a young kiddo, skipping through the aisles of my elementary school library on the way to the Shel Silverstein books. Poets are the most beautiful painters and I love the creative way they communicate feelings, ideas, and emotions.

Sophie Diener did a great job of evoking those feelings again as I listened to her collection, “Someone Somewhere Maybe.” I am really thankful that I was able to listen to this collection, as well. The tones, inflections, and strategic pauses were critically impactful to how I actually interpreted the poems.

My one critical piece of feedback is that some of the poems just felt a little juvenile and young blooded for my current level of enjoyment. My mindset was not calibrated to this immediately, so it took some time for me to get to the poet’s level in most of the readings. However, I was able to connect to those old feelings of young love and wonderment that these poems created while listening.