3.5⭐️

First of all, thank you so much to Matthew for sending this my way!

This is a collection of poetry written while healing from a breakup with a long-term partner. It’s honest, raw, emotional, and Matthew definitely doesn’t hold back. This felt like reading someone’s diary, all their deepest thoughts and emotions, which I appreciated. I find a lot of poetry (that I read, at least) tends to try and be more general so as to appeal to a larger audience, which can make it hard to connect to. So I really like that Matthew was clear with the fact that he was writing about a specific event in his life, and that this book was mostly about one person.

With that said, that is also where my one main issue with this collection came in. This book is split into 4 parts. In Acts 1 and 2, I assume those were written shortly after the breakup when the strongest emotion he was feeling was anger. And let me preface by saying feeling that anger is completely valid, and I think the healthiest thing you can do is to allow yourself to fully feel whatever emotions you need to feel. So this is not to say that I don’t think he should have been angry. However, the level of anger in the first two acts were filled with aggression as well, and knowing that all this aggression was directed at one specific person made me a little uncomfortable at times. For context on my part, I have never been broken up with before, I’ve only ever been the one to do the breaking up. So while reading this, I wasn’t able to connect with all the emotions he was feeling, so I couldn’t really understand why that amount of aggression was necessary. Being that I have been in the shoes of his ex before, I found myself imaging how I would feel if one of my exes had written this about me, and it was not a comfortable thought to have. Personally, I don’t think it’s ever appropriate to tell someone that their actions made you want to commit suicide. It is of course a valid thing to feel, and I feel deeply for Matthew for having gone through that, as I also struggle with severe mental health issues. But this is the one time where I wish he hadn’t specified that this book was about one person, because in my opinion it’s not fair to put that on their shoulders.

But moving onto the positives, which there are a lot more of!

I love how vivid Matthew is able to paint his emotions. I’m also someone who feels everything so deeply, and I think it’s a beautiful thing (although painful at times). Matthew does not seem afraid to bare his soul and lay everything out in the open. Even though this book is open for anyone to read, the way it’s written makes it feel like a privilege to be allowed to see all these vulnerable parts of Matthew. It is not an easy thing to do, but Matthew managed to do it so beautifully, so I applaud him for that.

I especially loved the format he chose for this book, the four acts. It was a really easy way to track his journey, and better understand where he was emotionally throughout the course of this book. Acts three and four were my favourites, where he was still angry and sad, but the aggression was gone and he was starting to process his emotions and begin healing. He began to understand himself better, learned things about his own personality and the way that he feels things, and most importantly he begins to learn how to process his emotions in a healthier way. It was really interesting to witness this process, as it’s one that we all go through but rarely pay attention to the growth in the moment. We usually only see the ways in which we’ve grown when it’s hindsight; we look back and think “wow I’ve really changed since then.” But Matthew seemed able to capture his growth in the moments they were happening, as was very evident in the way his writing changed in the second half of the book, and that was fascinating to read.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this and I’m looking forward to getting to his next collection. Thank you again to Matthew for sending me these, it’s very much appreciated!