Andrea Gibson is a popular poet for many reasons, and this volume is just going to add to those. Gibson's brief lines are packed with information and wisdom; simple, lovely drawings; and unexpected turns of phrase that remind readers just what the English language can do in the right hands. My only complaint is its length: too short. Read it!

I had high expectations for this book, but unfortunately it fell short for me. I liked the presentation of the poems, and I loved the inclusion of illustrations appearing at odd times. The poems however, didn't resonate, and didn't have enough depth for my liking.

I was halfway through this book before I realized that I was familiar with the writer from their spoken word pieces, available on Youtube.

“Any feminist who has ever taken the high road will you the high road gets backed up and sometimes we need to take a detour straight through the belly of uncensored rage.”

I read that line, yelled “YES!” because it’s perfection, and realized who the writer was. Gibson dances in out of a multitude of thems – love, politics, LGBTQ+, gender, feminism, and the human condition. I ultimately would rate this about 3.5 stars out of 5. Some are fantastic (see snippets of greatness below) and others weren’t that good. Or at the very least, they didn’t speak to me, which is fine as I’m a cishet white woman so I’m not the target audience for a lot of it. When Gibson gets it right though, it’s so good.

”Patriarchy taught me how to take a punch better than I could take a compliment.”
I mean. Amazing.

“America wakes me in the middle of the night, tells me she had a bad dream, one where the bootstraps hung from trees, one where the morgue pinned flowers on prom suits, one where the casket was a full stomach, growling for more. In the dream, American finally elected a president who the truth, who didn’t bother wearing a sheet, who knew his shoes would be recognized on Wall Street. In the dream, the scaled of justice were busy discussing Miss America’s weight. And all they of hate is that it couldn’t beat the love out of me…”

Some snippets hit home.

“The hardest people in the world to forgive are the people we once were. The people we are trying desperately not to stir into the recipe of who we are now.”


Overall, it’s a solid collection that has its ups and downs but the hits make the misses worth it.


Take Me With You will be available for purchase February 13, 2018.

I received a free advanced digital copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This has no effect on my opinion, rating, or review.

The words in this book relates to the people who feels like they are alone to love someone. I really like the language and the style of writing. It doesn't make me bored reading this poem.

Some parts of this book were absolutely golden. I highlighted a lot of quotes that I'm sure I will go back to again and again. Unfortunately, my major issue was with the formatting of this book. Strange formatting in arc ebooks doesn't tend to bother me that much, however in a book of poetry and poetic writing, the run-on lines and lack of differentiating between different topics made the book almost impossible to read. The whole book read as one long run-on text. It was very confusing and made me unsure what lines were meant to be together and what weren't. I'm sure this book would read much better as a physical book, where white space is more obvious and the drawings don't come in the middle of sentences, but for this reason I was unable to really enjoy it and can only give two stars.

I received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Since I adore Rupi Kaur's poems, I'm intrgued to give Take Me With You a try. It's a LGBTQ poem collection which explores various topics. The topics that highlighted this book were political and family related poems. Raising their voices as they struggled on being accepted by the society and their love ones. It's written with such rawness and I like it. However, some poems aren't my cup of tea particularly about love. I thought they're bland and unoriginal.

I unfortunately could not understand this book very well. It was extremely hard to follow for me, and I wish it was executed better. However, there are many incredible topics covered in this book that I'm sure many can relate to. I, however, found it a bit confusing and hard to get through.

Take Me With You by Andrea Gibson is a wonderfully written poetry. It is also a collection of LGBTQ. This is this first for me, I've never read LGBTQ inspired poetry book before. With lines like" You keep worrying you're taking up too much space I wish you'd let yourself be the Milkyway" and "I told myself I was built like a song..." are powerful lines woven into these pages. There's a balance of upbeat poems to deeper more meaningful words. This book shows today's world in these lines of poems that reflect in a truthful way that explores significant themes to today's' world from love to politics to gender, family, and feelings. Take Me With You also has drawings, I also enjoyed the font and layout of the book. This is a must-read for anyone who enjoys poetry.

Packed with so many moments that resonated with me, or that I could pass on to friends who I knew needed to hear those words. Confronting, beautiful, and a comforting reminder that one is not alone.

Weird. As a fan of Gibson's spoken word, I expected something deep and personal but still universal and emotional. This book is, instead, a bunch of random one-liners that are sometimes hokey, sometimes cringe-worthy, and very infrequently affecting. It's also hard to follow, as I started off expecting long pieces but instead got unconnected snippets of what felt like bigger poems that never gelled. This is a strange reading experience that I don't think I'd recommend, especially for those unfamiliar with Gibson's work; there are much better ways to introduce yourself to their poetry than through this meme-ready silliness.

I wouldn’t say that I’m the biggest poetry fan, but I am always willing to read anything by queer authors, so I knew I had to give this a shot.

For the most part, I really enjoyed it. There were some lines that just really struck me as so original and truthful. Others were less inspired and seemed a little cheesy or tired in places. I also think that the font/formatting of the book impacted my reading experience. It was difficult to tell when one poem ended and another began and the font seemed out of touch to the emotions being expressed in the words.

Overall, I did enjoy this, but it just didn’t feel finished to me.

I think the formatting of this book, really let it down. I don't know what was the actual formatting of the poems, and what was formatting messed up due to it being an e-book. As it stood, many of the poems appeared without line breaks. More like paragraphs, or disjointed sentences. Which... I'm not sure if that was how the poet intended it to be read?

I also just didn't know where the poems ended and where they began. Subjects would change at the flip of a page, or from one sentence to the next but nothing indicated this was a new poem, or that there had been a shift at all. Which made reading this... kind of, weird? I don't know. I think with poetry it's good to have the definites. Reading a poem with the definite beginning and end gives it that punch. You know what feeling you're supposed to get from the poem by the time you're there at the end. I didn't get a lot of feelings reading this. Or when I felt something, it diminished so quickly because I was like huh? why are we onto something else now??

Maybe it was because of the formatting issues, or maybe it was because of something else (or maybe both), but I just couldn't connect to this poetry collection. There were some poems that I did really like, but most of them just didn't work for me. There were some lovely illustrations though that I really liked!

I wouldn't discourage anyone from picking up this book because I think poetry is so so subjective and what works for one person won't work for another. And again, all of the issues with formatting did really hinder my ability to properly read or enjoy this. If you do decide to read it, I would suggest a print copy though. That should have the proper formatting, and will probably be a lot better for the illustrations as well!

This was a great little book with a strong message of resilience.

Andrea Gibson's Take Me with You sounded very interesting and I hardly ever read poetry although I write poems myself. Perhaps it was the LGBTQ approach that peeked my interest, even though it wasn't the driving force in the book. First and foremost I have to congratulate Gibson for the wonderful cover and the visuals of the book are awesome too. The font is perfect and how the poems are visually constructed along with the art. There could me more art though, since it fits the book and style.

The first third of the book is more poetry-like actually and light and grave at the same time. This is because the theme is love and Gibson surely has some interesting analogies and such, which were very poignant. When we moved from love to other things the book kind of loses the grip. The style changes and the poems are more like mini essays with somewhat cliched views. There were those awesome points too, but when the poem-structure breaks, the content loses focus too. The themes varied and the love one was the best. The political ones were slightly out of place, but I did like the ones about being and feeling different as well as loving the same gender. I wish there had been more of this inner turmoil and thoughts instead of mundane stuff, since Gibson nails that. Still, a good collection.

I am a fan of Andrea Gibson and I've even seen them perform when I was in college. However, I found Take Me With You to be only okay. There were a few poems that I liked, but the majority were very short and seemed only surface level. There were the type of things you would see shared on Facebook or Tumblr - they sound good but there's not much there. If you enjoy that type of thing, I'd recommend this collection. Otherwise, I fear there are much better collections.

Andrea Gibson's poetry is smart, passionate, and strong. This book is beautifully hopeful. A short but empowering read.

I usually dislike poetry books but this one was the exception to the rule. I loved it.
This is a collection of poems that made me smile a lot. (I wish I could quote some of them.)

I cannot say much more than this: Thank you Andrea Gibson for writing this. I just read a book filled with love and I can tell the author put her heart in this because it moved me.

I encourage everyone to read this piece, I promise you won't regret it.

Take Me With You is a collection of LGBTQ poems written by Andrea Gibson. And is divided into three segments: Love, The World and Becoming, through which it explores themes of love, gender, politics, sexuality, family, and forgiveness.
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Few of the poems were really well written and touches your heart. But many were just, Just Bad. Among which some were too cliched and some cringe worthy.
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(I would have quoted some of the poems from the book so that you all could decide yourselves but I'm not allowed to do so with my ARC.)
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I will still give it a '3 star' rating as few of the poems were excillent. But again, the all over experience was disappointing. Honestly, reading the title and the blurb I really expected to like this poetry collection.

Even though I'm not a lesbian, I can relate to the way the author talks about love. I love her writing style and all the illustrations. It's a very beautiful book!

This was a really nice and cozy read for me. Especially the second part, made me smile and made me think. I enjoyed it.