Book: The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One (Women Are Some Kind of Magic 2) by Amanda Lovelace
Release Date: March 6th 2018
Tags: Poetry/ Feminism / Trigger Warnings / Menstruation / Abuse / Patriarchy
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this review copy in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis
The witch: supernaturally powerful, inscrutably independent, and now—indestructible. These moving, relatable poems encourage resilience and embolden women to take control of their own stories. Enemies try to judge, oppress, and marginalize her, but the witch doesn’t burn in this one.
Review
One of the things when you step out of your comfort zone is that you can find remarkable things. Amanda Lovelace’s poetry certainly is that. This is only my second poetry collection I’ve read, but it certainly has not put me of it. On the contrary.
One of the things I knew before going in was that Amanda’s style would be quite different from the style of poems I read in The Goblin Market. Where there is more subtleness in those, Amanda’s poetry is in your face. With the topics she chooses to take on that is much needed. Feminism, abuse, patriarchy and so on are just a few things she touches upon. Things that are topics of discussion these days. That are current. Important. You can’t be subtle about those things. They wouldn’t listen.
The collection of poetry is divided into four sections. For me the second section called The Burning was the strongest. Poems like Abuse is Nothing to Romanticize, Expectations vs Reality and Everything is a Distraction are strong poems with so much needed messages that a lot of the current patriarchy do not want to hear.
While saying I enjoyed reading this poetry collection isn’t quite the right word, as a woman I felt strengthened and validated in my own experiences. And I haven’t even dealt with half of what other women have endured.
Having said that, I can’t quite rate this up to 4 stars. The reason for this is the filler content that is scattered throughout the collection. I don’t think the collection needs it and I think it takes out perhaps some of the punch. In a collection with about 200 pages it was just too much.
A Dance With Books 
I read the first book in this series yesterday, how did you feel about that one? I personally am still interested in that one but I did feel like book 1 had a lot of filler too!
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I haven’t actually read it since it doesn’t seem to need to be read in order? But sad to hear it also has filler. I was wondering about that as I’ve seen some say that the first was stronger than this one.
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Really? It’s roughly 200 pages long and there was only a handful (10 or less) in the collection that I enjoyed. There was a “poem” in there that was literally 3 words – if that’s not filler then I don’t know what is. I’ve heard more positive things said about book 2 tbh.
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Yes. I saw a review on Goodreads basically saying they preferred the first one over the second. I guess it just depends on who you follow. 🙂
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Thanks for sharing your review. Interesting, but not for me.😊
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I knew that. 😉
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Shame about the filler content in an otherwise good collection- great review!
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Yes it is a shame.
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That title caught my attention! I’m not a huge poetry reader…. but 200 pages would be pushing it for me, filler or no 🙂 Sounds like a good concept though.
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To be fair these aren’t very lengthy poems either so reading the 200 pages does go very fast.
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