**Warning: This review contains spoilers that WILL ruin this piece. Please read the piece before you read the review--it's short.**

Author: saudi_araybia

Genre: Poetry

What I liked about this book:

Honestly I was nervous about reviewing this piece because the author is of a religion and culture different from my own, and I wanted to be respectful. But they asked me to review it anyway, and I'm glad I did.

This is not just a poetry book. It is an incredibly well constructed character study of a young woman, and it has a lot to say when you scratch past the surface. She's young, she's religious, her father is abusive. Her mother has cancer and she's stuck on a boy she met in class she can't have. Her best friend is young, single, and pregnant. There's a lot going on here, and poetry is the perfect medium for this specific story.

Over the course of the book the tone of the poems change from overtly religious and mostly about faith to conflicted and fleeting. Things get worse, then get better, and just when you think they're okay...the main character is hit by a truck driven by an ISIS extremist and killed, which calls back seamlessly to a previous chapter on the subject.

Her death is pointless and senseless, and I'm honestly salty over it.

At the bottom of many chapters are images that define some of the terms that are used and give explanation to some of the things going on in the poem which you might not catch if you don't have the proper cultural background. These were nice to include.

The entire thing is just very well done. Bravo to the author.

What I did NOT like about this book:

There are some spelling errors, and some word choices that I didn't really love, though they were minimal. It's hard to judge poetry on its flaws because it's such a subjective medium, and so hard to tell a story with.

Some of the notes at the bottom of the page weren't necessary IMO, even though most were.

Overall:

This is very impressive.

Rating:

9/10. It needs some polishing but I'd like to see it in a journal somewhere. Very well constructed. I'm very impressed with this.