April Showers Bring The Sun and Her Flowers
We are here again with another New York Times Bestseller produced by no other than Rupi Kaur. Though it is not May, when you would typically see flowers, we nonetheless wanted to add this trendy anthology to our own bookshelf. Since its release in October of 2017, it seems like every week, both of us see many pictures on Instagram stories or VSCO albums gleaming this title so devotedly.
As previously mentioned in our Milk and Honey review, we both are not intense poetry fanatics. We simply don't gravitate to this genre, or reap a lot from reading it. No hate for the readers that thrive on this. Here is just a fair warning how this will not be an incredibly deep review that this collection of poetry warrants.
With that being said, we struggled more with this book. Especially compared to the last one, we unfortunately didn't feel as connected. This is not to say that it wasn't good, bad or ugly. It was simply harder to relate and sink our teeth into. We attribute this to Kaur's willingness to write about topics such as sexual assault and immigration. Just because those are hot topics on any news headline, doesn't mean we can relate on the deep level that is laced into her writing. Hopefully, this isn't discouraging to any of you readers. We are simply trying to stay true to ourselves. Even though we couldn't personally relate to Kaur, we did find ourselves widening our horizons by empathizing through her story.
Instead of "yucking someone's yum" by putting down this book, we are going to focus on its qualities that really grabbed us...
For starters, the illustrations were on point as per usual. Though they are simply line drawings, it ultimately lets the story speak volumes for itself. Additionally, we like the partitioning of the collection of poems by the five chapters titled: wilting, falling, rooting, rising and blooming. Something that we think attracts many people to Rupi Kaur's writing is that it is incredibly powerful. Her words are truly sharp edges that dig into readers for the better. It's cringy in the most positive way. She doesn't shy away from difficult topics, rather she explores them in a way that draws out genuine emotion from the readers.
To finish off our review, we thought it be fun to add the parts that we enjoyed best during our read.
Snippets that Snatched Us:
- "sun becomes moon / moon becomes sun" (18)
- "if i'm not the love of your life / i'll be the greatest loss instead" (48)
- "why is it / that when the story ends / we began to feel all of it" (54)
- page 175 "fingers"
- "together we are an endless conversation" (185)
- page 189 "our souls are mirrors"
- "you must have a / honeycomb / for a heart / how else / could a man / be this sweet" (191)
Better Read than Dead,
Addie and Geneva
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