REVIEW: ALL THE THINGS I SHOULD'VE TOLD YOU by Shayla Raquel!

Hey everyone!  Today I have a review of All the Things I Should've Told You: Poems on Love, Grief & Resilience by Shayla Raquel.  Usually, I post reviews for books that I've requested or that the publisher has requested from me, but today's is a review purely because I wanted to...and have a lot of feelings.  And if I could give this little book a zillion stars, I would.  

BLURB/EXCERPT 

My soul bleeds.
Once punctured,
It trickles down the page
Until it spills, spills, spills.
There is no damming the stream
Of my soul.
The cut is too deep.
It is a surge now.
And I must bleed it all out to heal.

AMAZON | GOODREADS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

An expert editor, best-selling author, and book marketer, Shayla Raquel works one-on-one with writers every day. A lifelong lover of books, she has been in the publishing industry for ten years and specializes in self-publishing.

Her award-winning blog teaches new and established authors how to write, publish, and market their books.

She is the author of the Pre-Publishing Checklist, "The Rotting" (in Shivers in the Night), The Suicide Tree, and The 10 Commandments of Author Branding. In her not-so-free time, she acts as organizer for the Yukon Writers' Society, volunteers at the Oklahoma County Jail, and obsesses over squirrels. She lives in Oklahoma with her dogs, Chanel, Wednesday, and Baker.

Keep in touch:
Website URL: shaylaraquel.com
Instagram: Instagram.com/shaylaleeraquel
Twitter: Twitter.com/shaylaleeraquel
Medium: Shaylaleeraquel.medium.com
LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/shayla-raquel-9813a582/
TikTok: Tiktok.com/@shaylaleeraquel

MY REVIEW

If you're a fan of poetry, you'll enjoy this book.  It has a great balance of lighter poems about love and hard-hitting poems about loss.  Raquel's poetry is enjoyable to read, with a variety of forms and styles that work perfectly for each poem.  Some of these poems absolutely gutted me.  Reading this was like having all the messed-up parts of my own heart dismantled and stitched back together -- it's so weird.  The emotions presented in this collection are all completely laid out on the table; you get the sense that the author or narrator is sitting down at the table for a difficult heart-to-heart about brokenness and healing.  She presents her themes (love, grief, resilience) remarkably well; sometimes in metaphors, other times with a starkness that's stunning.  I loved it and read it entirely too quickly (in one sitting and in what felt like just a few minutes, but I also lost track of time while reading it so...).  This is definitely one book that I will cherish.