Title: A Strangely Wrapped Gift Author: Emily Juniper
Pages: 192 pages
Version: Ebook (ARC)
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing
Rating: ★★★★
Synopsis
In A Strangely Wrapped Gift, you will find journeys from mental illness to recovery, from heartbreak to heart growth, from hopelessness to empowerment, and from the ocean to the stars. In these pages, Juniper takes heavy, emotional raw material and weaves it into stunning, relatable poetry you’ll long to share with friends and loved ones. This collection is a reminder that broken pieces make the most beautiful mosaics, and that all of us possess the power to bloom even after a harsh winter.
This book was provided by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Central Avenue Publishing and Netgalley!
A Strangely Wrapped Gift is a poetry collection about mental illness, heartbreak, empowerment and many more topics.
Like a mountain
I rise
in spite of all the men
who think
they have conquered me.
When I started reading this poetry collection, I really liked that Emily Juniper immediately explained the title, her OCD was called a strangely wrapped gift. I think it’s nice when you get to know why an author chose his/her/their title because sometimes I just don’t know why they chose a specific title. But besides that, I also really liked the poetry collection in general.
Do not draft
your head into a war
your heart does not believe in
A Strangely Wrapped Gift is divided into 5 chapters: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring and Leap Year. I don’t have a favourite chapter, because I really liked all the poems. They were so relatable and I could connect to a few of them on a really personal level. I sometimes have this feeling that poets can describe your feelings better than you can yourself, and I really had that with this collection.
I feel too much
or not enough,
and get upset over things
that exist only in my head.
I am hard to love,
but that doesn't
make me less worthy.
I think that Emily Juniper did an amazing job with A Strangely Wrapped Gift. This was my first poetry collection by Emily Juniper, and I cannot wait to read more of her work! I think that her poetry is really beautiful and I loved that this collection talked about some different topics.
Favourite poems:
- The Possibility of Forever
- 1 A.M.
- Conditions
- Fissures
- An Open Letter to My Parents
- Good Drugs
- Drone
- Listen
- Rising
- Heads and Hearts
- Pieces
- Soft
- Insult
- Recovery Is Not Linear
- Autumn
- OCD II
- Turn You Into Art
- Could You Love Someone Like Me
- Chances
- On Mental Illness
- Wisdom
- How To Love Me
- Men I’ve Known
- 29
- What The Dandelion Taught Me