I always look at the 1-2 star eviews of a book to see what people didn't like in it. I'm talking constructive reviews, not review bombing BS.

I was entranced by The Poet X, so I was shocked by the negative reviews and the amount of them.

This was a book to be listened to and that's how I consumed it. I listen to audiobooks while I do design jobs and I found myself sitting and listening to this even when I had no work left.

Perhaps the poems on the page don't hit the same but this is performed so well on audio, I cannot imagine processing the words any other way.

Spoilers

Overall, this is a 4.5 star review for me because of one thing. This book shows parental abuse happening, describes in vivid detail how awful it is for the recipient, and has the perpetrator face no consequences. I get that it happens every day, I really do. However, I would hate for a teenager to read that, identify with it because it resembled their life, and sit with it as normal because that's ultimately what Xiomara did. There should have been repercussions. Something. There were only repercussions for Xiomara. I kept waiting for Father Sean or Mrs. Galiendo to help her, and I mean really help her. Not just help her get to her poetry slam. This is a pretty perfunctory complaint and definitely gets into the territory of what beyond the story itself is the responsibility of YA fiction.

Anyway, it's a great book, listen to it!