La Petite Mort by Eli Wilde is a collection of poetry that recounts the relationship between Rufus , a vampire and his love Elise .and how the breakdown of that relationship has a deeply damaging effect on Rufus' mental health. I found the use of poetry a unique and impactful way of telling a story and found several of the poems to be really beautiful, but I did feel like it lost momentum towards the end.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher , all opinions are my own.

Genuinely one of the finest poetry books I've read.

Gothic poetry is still fairly new to me. One thing I've noticed is how many people try to either mimic Poe or write very anachronistically. Eli managed to take inspiration from the gothic greats while weaving in his own narrative. I was impressed by not only the writing but the imagery. I tasted the grass. I smelt the blood. I felt her touch.

This isn't a collection of poems, it's a story. You feel his decline from infatuation to madness. Yes, parts feel sparse, as if you're missing parts of the story - yet it makes sense. He writes when his passion is high. Passion comes from the extremes of love, distress, fear, and loneliness.

Every part of me wants to dive deeper into this. I want to sit in a class as we analyze every line. There is so much here to pick up on in future re-reads. This is definitely on my list to buy asap. Undoubtedly, this is 5/5 stars.

The idea of a vampire poetry collection intrigued me and thank you Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review La Petite Mort.

Here we have vampire Rufus' poetry collection, primarily based about Elise - the love of his life (or death...) it seems who then becomes his greatest loss.

I wasn't expecting this to be quite so deep and emotional - but it really was. I liked most of the poems and something completely different than I have ever read before.

Format: Ebook, courtesy of NetGalley, but views are my own.

Plot:

Rufus is a vampire who writes poetry as a way to connect with humanity and those around him.

Pros:

I liked the premise. Character poetry can be so engaging, I like a collection that has a clear point of view or narrative voice. I think there is a lot of scope for a character like this, and what he is trying to do, and poetry is a great medium to explore his humanity. I also think it is a bit more accessible for those who don’t normally read poetry, because it can help it read a bit more like fiction. My favourite example of this character driven poetry is The Girl and The Goddess by Nikita Gill (although this is semi-autobiographical).

Not-so-pros:

The poetry itself is a bit hit or miss. Some of it feels really poignant, but there are a few that are a little style over substance, or feels like it is suffering from a heavily lent on thesaurus. None of it feels particularly groundbreaking, and I think it loses focus of its narrative point of view at times. This could well be the poetry of anyone discovering life as an adult, rather than being about the vampire experience - although this could well be a choice, perhaps having these blended views shows how close we are in nature to the monster.

Final:

If you like poetry of this kind (free verse, formless), then you may enjoy. My main critique is that it loses the nuance of its narrative view.

More of a 3.75 stars but I'm more than happy to round up! I'm not a huge fan of poetry but I've got to admit: the descriptions in this text were incredibly moving. I really enjoyed the tortured tone the book had and would definitely recommend it to a customer. It took me a little while to really get into it and it's not a book that I can picture myself in- it's more like looking at a painting and appreciating how beautiful it is but also how separate it is to you. Overall, I'm happy I read it and will look out for more of Wilde's work.

Wilde weaves a lyrical story through his dramatic poetry collection. Love, sex, and immortality are featured and explored through a variety of short griping poems. The storyline revolves around a vampire, or at least, that's the implication. Technically, the reference to the character's blood lust is as a "virus", but readers quickly realize this is a immortal love story with a vampire as the lead role.

At times, the narrator may be challenging to identity which makes it a little unclear who is speaking, but this may be a fault of my own as I don't typically read poetry. Still, I found the rhythm easy to connect with and the theme enticing. Overall, a quick haunting read.

Rufus Hobster is a vampire. He writes poetry.

A vampires love story through Poems.. name anything better than that…don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Rufus and his Human lover Elise.. a sad love story..? Rufus lost Elise, and so with her, he lost himself…

I’m not usually a big poetry reader, but I was intrigued by the concept of this book, A collection of poems written by a vampire offering his perspective on living, death, the afterlife, lust (carnal and for blood) and love.
Rufus the vampire is a pretty melancholic and tortured figure throughout the collection. I am all about the spooky vibes but as I said I’m not usually a poetry person so I did find it hard to connect with the poems, plus they seemed to take themselves a little too seriously? Which made it hard for me to take it seriously.
That being said it is a quick and easy read that does have some incredible and evocative imagery, if you are a fan of dark poems this could be the collection for you.

I was provided a digital ARC via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

This was like reading a fever dream. The wording was pretty, but it didn't make any sense to me. Maybe I'm just not the target audience.

I found the first 75% of this anthology enchanting - there are many highlights in my book of beautiful verses, heavily laden with emotion and drama and hitting on the full range of human (and supernatural) experience from birth, death, spirituality, sex, nature, sickness, and poverty.

Unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed certain parts, I found a point at which the story thread running through them all stopped making sense to me. I still enjoyed most individual entries, but I think the reading experience lost something when the overarching events became unclear. Many of the events in the later part of the book had a wide variety of potential literal and metaphorical interpretations, and as soon as I thought I landed on something cohesive, I read a few more pages and lost the thread again.

Overall, 2.5/5 (rounded to 3 for some platforms) - I would recommend many of the individual poems more widely than I would the full anthology. Definitely for those into a more “emo”-style modern poetry, those who particularly love vampires, or people who really want to puzzle through analysis and meaning.

Algo tranqui? NO.
SEXO SEXO SEXO
No dejaba de hablar de como coger de una forma "poética", no me molestaba tho pero era demasiado monotemático.

Thank you netgalley for the opportunity to read this title.

La Petite Mort is a collection of absurd and curious poems from the perspective of a vampire. I've not had the pleasure of reading anything quite like this before. It truly was a wonderful experience mixing fantasy with poetry.

I found the collection of poems entirely beautiful yet eerie and couldn't put the book down, just curious to read more haunting poems. This collection is extremely unique and I am excited to be able to recommend it to fans of both deep poetry and mysterious vampires.

I must admit that I don't read much poetry. While it didn't quite hit for me right off the bat I started to really enjoy La Petite Mort around the half way point. There were enough great poems in this collection that I will most likely come back around to it once again.

I honestly quite like this poetry collection. It's fragmented yet carries vivid imagery of the character's perspective and emotions. Every line is full of intense longing, passion, and sadness which I very much enjoy devouring. However, the end part fell short and lacks a bit of an impact for me. Overall, it's a raw and promising stream-of-consciousness poetry collection.

La Petite Mort is a beautifully written collection of poetry, written by a vampire.
The language our protagonist uses is intricate and emotional, allowing the reader to truly understand the constant internal battle he faces.
The most interesting part of this book for me was the religious aspect. Our protagonist seems to have once been religious as a human, but now questions his faith as he exists as this abomination of humanity.
Personally I could've done with it being slightly longer, but it was still a lovely read.

This was a poetry collection unlike any other I’ve read. Told from the perspective of vampire, Rufus, and his love and obsession for Elise. This was haunting and beautiful with themes of forbidden love, mental health, and dark romance. The story itself is filled with emotion and vulnerability.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for a gifted digital copy.

A very interesting collection of poetry. Will definitely be referencing this piece of literature again in the future.

This is a story driven poetry collection written by a vampire. Rufus hobster suffers from his immortality until he falls in love with a human, Elise. However when Elise leaves his side he descends into madness.

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review!

This has an interesting idea, but unfortunately it just wasn’t for me! I found it hard to connect to the story, understand what was happening at times, and the repetition of some words made it difficult to enjoy the poems.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley!

Curious and absurd. It was a great time.

I don't read a lot of poetry because I tend to find it hard to follow/understand, but this poetry collection was very approachable. The premise itself, poetry written by a vampire, is so silly and I love it. This was a really fun read, and I even found myself getting invested in the characters' story.