The Princess Saves Herself in this One

This is a hugely divisive collection of poetry written by a young woman and dealing mainly with the trauma she suffered as a child and teenager. There's a lot of trauma to unpack - an abusive mother, an eating disorder, possible sexual assault, losing family members to cancer and suicide within a month of each other. And Amanda Lovelace does a decent job of distilling that to a handful of words, which I suppose is what poetry is all about.

At the same time, this whole collection felt a little lazy and immature to me. These poems were reminiscent of the stuff I wrote in high school and posted on ffn. I'm honestly a little surprised this got published. It might just be that this is intended for a younger audience - like those Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul books. Remember those?

If you liked Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul and want basically that in poetry form, this is probably the book for you. If you're looking for something more mature or polished, skip this completely. It'll just get on your nerves.

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