I volunteered to read this book through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is well written. It will get you right in your feelings. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone. I plan to read more by this author. I don't read alot of poetry but I definitely plan to read more in the future.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free ebook to review!

I didn’t love or hate this one. There was one passage that made me feel what she was wanting to convey, but otherwise I just didn’t feel the emotion. It was well done for her age and I think she has potential!

I received a copy of this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Nineteen is a collection of poetry by a nineteen year old girl focusing on mental illness, heartbreak and coming of age. While I don’t love this style of poetry, there were some really lovely parts that I did enjoy. I felt like this lacked the emotion that I typically seek when reading poetry. It was a lot like how I felt while reading milk & honey, though I liked this one far more. I get that the author is coming into her own and she will probably get better and this is a pretty impressive and honest work from someone her age, but I long to see some more emotion or a little more grittiness from her. This was very surface-level and almost too cheesy for me at times.

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for my advanced copy of this poetry collection in exchange for an honest review.

This poetry collection features poems composed when the author was 19 years old. I think due to that I found myself only drawn to certain poems. Many felt very teen angsty and centered around topics that are important to you when you’re a teenager, and let’s face it I am far from that by now. A few though seemed incredibly mature and timeless – they most often dealt with family and non-romantic relationships. Those, in my opinion, let the author shine. It’s clear how talented Makenzie Campbell is and I foresee her influencing the poetry genre quite a bit in the future. Indeed, I am looking forward to following her personal growth and development. She already manipulates language in a way that hits you deeply, that makes you think, and that challenges you to look within yourself. I can only imagine where she goes from here. Until then, I will be checking out her other publications as this book has made me curious about her art. Overall, Nineteen is well-worth your time if you’re going through heartbreak, romantic loss, are in the throes of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, or just want to get a better sense of how a 19-year-old experiences such events. I, for one, am glad I have this behind me though, and maybe that was the reason why I couldn’t easily relate to these poems. But isn’t it amazing how profoundly subjective poetry feels to us?!

Title provided via Netgalley for honest review.

I don't quite remember what prompted me to wish for this book, because I don't like poetry, especially modern poetry. It doesn't feel or read the same. There's less relevance in this than the traditional poets and literary authors I've read in high school or college.

This may be the thing some other nineteen year old needs in their life, but I can say it wasn't for me. There were some small pieces here and there I thought were very enlightening and thought-provoking, but ultimately this just felt very disconnected and uninspiring.

This collection was honestly a little forgettable. It's broken up into six parts and the first three or four read very repetitively. The poetry is pretty good but it's just not really what I like in poetry, although there are a few quotes I'll be saving.

3.75 stars ⭐

"I've been damaged and I use men as a bandage. But they always fall away the next morning leaving my wound exposed."

This started so strong, it was like she was reading my mind. I read it at the right time of my life and I thank her for that.
But there were many instances that it felt too personal (i know that's basically what a poem is but hear me out), so personal that there was no way that I could relate unless I was the one she was referring to.
Overall, it's an awesome poetry collection that you should check out!

I liked this collection, many poems resonated with me. The title of each section fits with the content within. Some of the language could've been stronger, there's the occasional filter word or weak verb. However, overall I enjoyed this collection.

⭐️ 4 / 5 Stars ⭐️

I thoroughly enjoyed this poetry collection. it is a modern collection and the file I was given by the publisher didn’t properly break up the poems, so I was kind of just guessing when one started an another ended. But saying that, it was easy to tell with a change in theme or voice.

It touches a lot on growing up, over coming these hard challenges we face and mental health, but felt it done so in a very encouraging way. It didn’t feel like a “dark” or harrowing read, and had quite a few poems on love and travel.

The writing style, I found, is incredibly beautiful and I just became swept away in Mackenzie Campbell’s words. I highlighted so many sections and want to own a physically copy so I can note and highlight so many more. Her words are truly breath taking and there’s just so many amazing quotes that I just want to write everywhere and anywhere - any space that I can find I want to fill up with quotes from this collection.

I enjoyed reading this collection of poetry as I felt a connection to the author immediately by the writing style alone. How she managed to reach out to audience and address the similarities with her comparisons of feelings. One thing that did stand out and bother me a little though was the over use of metaphors. It felt that there was too many of these so at one point it did become a bit repetitive and less meaningful.

This was poetry in its purest form. As I’m also nearly nineteen, a lot of these poems were very special to me. It is about heartbreak, self love,... which is all so very important.

I really wanted to like it, and I did like a lot of it, but I didn't always feel the emotion I think I was supposed to feel. It might just have been the timing that was off.. and I really want to reread it, because I really think it could resonate with me at the right moments.

Thank you to Netgalley, publisher and author for a copy of this book.

I was underwhelmed by this collection. I couldnt connect with the poems.

Poetry is something you either connect with or you don't. It's highly subjective and peoples thoughts and opinions on each piece will always differ and make readers think and feel different things.
With that being said some in this collection we hard to connect with whereas others were very easy to. The overall feel I got from the collection was it was if the author has scrolled through social media and encompassed all that she'd found in a book which ends up being a very nice and pleasant read.

An ARC of this novel was sent to me by NetGalley for reviewing purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I tried so far to like Mackenzie's poetry, but I felt like a lot of it fell short on me because I am unable to relate to it,

Actual rating: 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4)

This is the second book I've read by Makenzie and to be honest, I liked it more than the other one!

Although there were some poems I didn't like that much, there were some that I felt connected with, and also felt her deep emotion.

This book is divided in 6 sections, and in my opinion, the first 2 and the last 2 were the ones I enjoyed the most

I really enjoy Makenzie Campbell's aesthetic. From the cover, to the art in the book, to the way her poetry is constructed, there's a lot of potential.

But this just fell very short for me. These were all metaphors and analogies that I've heard and seen before on Instagram & Facebook poetry pages. They were all your classic tropes: your chest being compared to caged birds, love being written in the stars, hearts being compared to growing flowers, watering dead relationships and expecting them to grow, etc etc. I truly feel as if the author went to a Facebook poems page, and took every photo and extended it into a poetry book. None of the poems (although there were some lines that were beautiful) truly surprised me, they were all very... predictable.

I am curious to see how this poet grows the older she gets. I feel that I really enjoy her style, but there is still some much needed growth in the content of her poems. I want to see her expand into uncharted territory, not one-line metaphors I've seen a bunch of 16 year-olds repost on my timeline. I will be keeping my eyes open for new work.

I am 19. Reading this I felt no connections at all with the writing and the experience the author was talking about. I understand not everyone experiences the same thing at the same age, but I wasn't expecting this to solely be about love/heartbreak. Also I feel like this was trying to be a selfhelp book while also being lyrical poetry.... Overall just not for me.

*eArc of Nineteen provided by Netgalley*

3.5/5 Stars
Another ARC provided by NetGalley, and another poetry book set to be released in March. I very much enjoyed the writing style, and personally liked the mix of shorter/longer poems. It sets a good pace while reading it, not too fast where you’re flying threw it and not too slow where you feel like it’s dragging; a happy medium. The first half of this collection is what I related to the most. Some of the poems even brought tears to my eyes, they were beautifully written. Especially reading this at 19, which is the same age the author wrote this about her transitioning into adulthood, made it a little more personable. As much as I loved the first half the second wasn’t for me. It started to delve into breakups, and heartbreak, and unfortunately started to get cheesy, and cliche in my opinion. Heartbreak is a topic that is overused in poetry, time, and time again. Just about every poetry book I read, it’s there written just about the same way too. Which in the end brought my overall rating down. I still really enjoyed it, and would recommend it!

I'm not nineteen anymore...

Book Review: Nineteen by Makenzie Campbell
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing
Release Date: 3rd March, 2020

Heartbreak. A topic that feels like it's been done to death. Can you still write about a break up, or losing someone in an original way? Or, maybe I'm now at an age where I've read a lot about it. I suppose at nineteen it's all still relatively new.

With that being said, it's important to note, before I review this book - I am not nineteen. You can add ten years to that and come somewhat close to my age. Therefore, this book is not something I feel I can relate to anymore, and honestly, it didn't evoke any feelings of the past.

Some areas of the poet's thoughts do come across as melodramatic and 'oh woe is me', but again, that's probably my bias because I'm not in the midst of teenage heartache. Really, I'm probably just bitter that I'm no longer nineteen, and I don't want to admit or accept that I'm getting old.

You may have guessed that the title; Nineteen reflects the poet's age when she wrote the book. It is about a specific time in a young person's life; a transition in to adulthood. Described as covering topics such as, 'heartbreak, love, loss, war, peace and healing' it seems that everyone should be able to relate. However, for me, that time has passed.

In order to find some connection with the poetry I did try to recall how I felt during a particularly difficult break-up. At twenty years old I remember that it felt dramatic at the time, but then the poet says she had, 'been in your life for months' and I can't help but cringe at the childishness. I think how I was with my teenage boyfriend for years.

Moving away from the subject matter, the book itself is well written. I would consider it more prose than poetry. It is a stream of consciousness; all the thoughts and feelings are poured onto the page. Saying that, this can make the structure erratic; the poet it flitting from one idea to the next without completing the thought. One minute she is discussing the metaphor of being in the 'passenger seat', therefore not feeling in control. The next sentence is a jarring turn to astrology.

Towards the end of the narrative we do revisit the car metaphor as she finds new love and becomes 'the driver'. It's that familiar, yet heart-warming message that all the broken hearted need to hear, 'you broke me in the worst way, but this pain bloomed into a blessing'; everything will be okay in the end. You could say it's an over-used trope, but at some point I guess it's something we all needed to hear, even if we didn't believe it at the time.

Obviously, poetry is a personal form of expressing an experience. I imagine it was very therapeutic to write. If you are living heartbreak right now and want to embrace and wallow in it, then this book could be for you.

Thanks to Central Avenue Publishing and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this e-arc.