This came to me at an important time in my life.

Everything is a mess, and my mind is so loud that it's hard to breath. Lang's collection matched all my thoughts and emotions. Love and longing, loss and emptiness.

"A Long Time Ago

Everything feels sentimental these days, every song feels loaded, feels somehow directed at me. Every emotion is heightened tenfold, your fingertips leaving burn marks on my skin.

I think it only feels this way for me when things are beginning or when they're ending.

And my love, we started this a long time ago."

*I thank Lang Leav, Andrews McMeel Publishing, and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

There were some poems that lingered on in my mind, but overall, this was my least favorite poetry collection by Leav. However, I would definitely recommend this book to the fans of her previous collections. I think they will thoroughly enjoy and relate to this book.

I read my first Lang Leav book, Love and Misadventure a few years ago and fell so in love with her writing and thoughts.  I have no idea why it has taken me years to pick her work back up!  I was offered this book through NetGalley to read, so thank you so much to them and also to Andrews McMeel Publishing; you have both rekindled a spark for Lang Leav's poetry in me! 

Love Looks Pretty on You is a collection of poetry and prose, as the subtitle says, that deals with a plethora of topics.  It most certainly has the feel of earlier collections of Leav's work.  I think the most pertinent tidbit about Leav's work is that it always tends to capture some of the rawest, most fleeting, and intense emotions of life and all the stuff that comes with love, longing, and heartbreak.  Her books are always very strong and this newest collection keeps up with that while adding a little more life and hope.  Specifically, this collection of work really celebrates women and current day problems that we face.  Leav does so in a poetic voice; she is able to weave beautiful pieces of writing that pack so much meaning.

One thing that I specifically loved about this book was the variance between poetry and prose.  Even within each category or writing, the forms varied within.  Some prose was a letter format, some was a sentence.  Some poems were a page long, some rhymed, some very open free verse just lines long.  I adore how it goes back and forth between these different forms.  Leav really has a knack for feeling what she is writing and putting those words into the perfect form.  There are a ton of the smaller prose pieces that just stick with you because they are so short but potent.  I think reading these different forms mixed together keeps me as more of an active reader, especially when it comes to poetry and does make the emotions and feelings that saturate the works weigh me down.  I will say that I read this in several settings over a longer period just because I like to take my time and let things sink in and go back to what I really loved.

For me, the varied forms made this entire collection so much more personal.  I feel like Leav is writing these poems and letters, and small snippets about life and love wisdom to herself to read later.  This feels like the book that I wanted to read when I was younger because it feels like a protective caring nurturer giving you advice and helping you through some tough stuff.  It is almost like a personal manifesto or a very open collection of wisdom.  Almost everything in this book is things that we all need to hear at some point in our lives.  The versatility and almost agelessness of this book make it a strong piece to read, as you can connect with it on so many levels through time.  There were pieces in here that I had wished I was able to read years ago and pieces that I am glad I read.  The piece titled "What He's Lost," hit on some big issues for me from the past year and just reading those words gave me immediate comfort and hope.  It was the note that I needed to find.

Technically speaking, the index at the end is fantastic.  I usually don't review pieces of books like that, however; the index is very well done and not only lists poem titles but also major subjects and topics.  Readers can flip through to look for possible triggers, but also if you know you need something to read that relates to something she has written about, it is easy to get there.  The look and feel of this book are exceptionally aesthetically pleasing.  It uses a lot of white open space and blank pages.  Nothing feels cramped to rushed or busy.  It feels like each page is its own piece and the clean design and blank pages between enhances that, giving the reader time to contemplate before they are rushed off to the next.  

On Goodreads, I gave this book 5 stars because I have no reason not to.  There is nothing that I disliked, nothing that gave me problems, and no complaints about the pieces in general.  This is one of the best collections of work I have read this year and one that I will buy for the young women in my family for when they need it.  This book is due to published on January 29, 2019.

this was my least favorite read by lang. Her other novels were amazing! these poems didn't have the same power and connection to the words. I will still pick up every lang book she writes because when you find those short poems that resonate in your heart and soul I feel she changes you. There is so much self help in her poetry. I just wish the passion was in this one. =[

The novelist struggles.
The poet suffers.
[pg. 105]


Love Looks Pretty on You tilts back and forth between themes of self-reflection and confessions and declarations with the above poem as the fulcrum of this beautifully balanced collection of notes to the author’s younger selves. “Too Young” on page 61 was written when Lang Leav was twelve years old, but the majority of the text ruminates on the whirlwind of experiences during young adulthood.

The introduction proclaims Love Looks Pretty on You as a celebration of the female spirit, which is more directly linked to the authorship of self on page 5 with, “All this time, I thought I was writing for the lovers, when I’ve been writing for the writers.” This seemingly unexpected realization connects the recurring themes of voice, personal back story, past loves, loss, and flowers with the feminine power of creation, regeneration, and resurgence. Ideas about actual and imagined selves or identities wrestle in the past, present, and future.

Lang Leav taps into a generational spectrum of the musical zeitgeist and transposes it into present-day chords with deep emotional reverberations that also incorporate religious and secular imagery. Love Looks Pretty on You, title and overarching themes about romantic relationships, harkens back to the wistful regrets in “You Look So Good in Love” by George Strait. “At Last” on page 6 evokes the yearning ache of the Etta James version of the tune by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon. “The Long Way” echoes the sense of bewilderment in 1979’s “Take the Long Way Home” by Supertramp. There’s a little of Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” on page 77, and essential truths shared with “You Say” by Lauren Daigle, Hailee Steinfeld’s “Most Girls” and Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love” scattered throughout these intimate reveries.

Some pieces are titled and some are not. All of them capture a facet of being young and searching for one’s strongest, most authentic self.

Now that you have it all, do you ever wish you could go back to when you had it simple? [pg. 95]

Lang Leav throws down the gauntlet above and with “This Year: on page 19. It’s a challenge worth accepting.

The index is arranged alphabetically by title or by the first word for untitled pieces.

Overall Rating: 4.5/5⭐
.
"Too young for love
Too young to know
How far a touch
A kiss can go
~
Too old for comfort
Or childhood charms
Too old to be held
In my mother's arms
~
The world is hard
When you're in between
Your future world
And childhood dreams
______________________

I am huge fan of Lang Leav's word composition skills and how she puts together a thought be it a simple one or complex. And this book really did rise to its expectations.
💕You can feel the rawness in the words and emotions in each pieces
💕The poems are based on hard to digest struggles of women in this patriarchal world & were beautifully written
💕captivates you from the very beginning
💕the most fav part of mine was that you can find a piece of yourself in most of the poems if not all.
💭Comparing the the poetry and prose pieces with each other the 3/3 part of the book slightly slowed down its magic for me but overall it was a wonderful read.

Friends, I am pleased to announce that poetry is making a comeback! In recent years there has been a distinct upsurge in the interest of poetry by both readers and publishers. Lang Leav, international bestselling novelist and poet, is one of the voices of this movement.

Previously, it was an accepted fact that poetry simply didn’t sell. In modern times, people prefer novels and other works of prose. I have heard it lamented by my friends and other literary critics that poetry has fallen by the wayside. They bemoan the fact that “no one reads poetry anymore.”

Leav’s groundbreaking success, as well as the success of other contemporary poets such as Elizabeth Avecedo, Amanda Lovelace, and Rupi Kaur, have proven that this simply is not the case.

The face of poetry has changed. Poetry is no longer the sole playground of men dominated by misogynists like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Instead, poetry is now young, vibrant, and undeniably female.

Even more than that, I am overjoyed to see that poetry has once more become an act of rebellion. Female poets such as Leav are using their words to loudly proclaim that the lives and experiences of women and girls matter.

According to her website, Leav “was born in a Thai refugee camp when her family were fleeing the Khmer Rouge Regime. She spent her formative years in Sydney, Australia, in the predominantly migrant town of Cabramatta.”

Literary critics continue to look down their noses at poets such as Leav, despite her numerous awards and literary achievements (Leav has been featured in both The Guardian and The New York Times). Ironically, novels were once also disparaged as being only fit for the “fairer” and “simpler” sex.

A common criticism of Leav and her fellow contemporary poets is that their poems are “not poems at all.” Leav directly confronts such criticism in In her latest collection, Love Looks Pretty on You, which is due to be released January 29th. She grapples directly with her many critics and offers words of encouragement to other writers, especially young female writers.

Leav’s words are revolutionary in a world that would prefer women and girls to be objects of ornamentation instead of fully self actualized human beings. Furthermore, she proves in her collection that she is capable at both traditional forms of poetry as well as contemporary prose poems. She even includes a piece of her juvenalia (a poem written when she was twelve) in order to illustrate her development as both a writer and poet.

This was my first encounter with Leav. I was very pleased to discover her and I’m surprised that I have not encountered her work sooner, especially when one considers her massive following over 2 million fans on social media.

This collection was beautifully written and explored important themes that need to be discussed, such as healing from an abusive relationship and finding one’s voice in world full of brokenness.

I purposely seek out female poets of color because I long to see myself represented in one of my favorite art forms.

Poetry is not dead. It has simply transformed. I am grateful that Leav has helped to inspire people all over the world to once more lend an ear to the music of poetry.

This was my first experience with Leav’s work and I can’t wait to read her earlier poems, as well as her novel Sad Girls.

I highly recommend Love Looks Pretty on You for anyone who is a lover of words, especially if you are a female writer who loves poetry.

Note: I received a free digital advanced reader copy of this book through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

In most poetry books with heartbreak, it usually leaves you melancholy. However with love looks pretty on you, it shows that no matter how bad relationships can be, you can overcome the damage he/she caused.

I found this poetry collection to be raw, heartfelt and touching, yet inspiring.

I also enjoyed the different forms of poetry. Most writers have the same style throughout. But I liked that it wasn’t like that for this. Each poem was different.

I would definitely recommend this book to people

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher I was able to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
****
This is not my first time reading Lang Leav’s work, at this point I think the only thing I haven’t read is her first novel.

Love Looks Pretty on You is a collection of love in all its forms. Love of family, friends, partners, healthy love, broken love, lost love, etc. One of my favorite things about her prose is that despite how short her poems are, they’re not lacking at all in emotion. You get equal gut punch or soft ‘oh’ of wonder no matter the poem. My favorite of Leav’s collections is Lullabies, also the first one I read, coincidence?, but this comes in a close second. Highly recommend.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

"It is your right to define love on your own terms."

Lang Leav weaves emotion into every word of this collection. I felt on the verge of tears for a long, long time reading this book. This was exactly the kind of poetry I love so deeply, full of love and loss, and full of sweetness.

This was my first Lang Leav book but it will not be my last.

I have come to relish every new release by Lang Leav and Love Looks Pretty on You definitely satisfies in a way that I've come to expect from Leav's poetry.

Love is a common topic on which Leav chooses to weave her poetic prowess. Here, in contrast with her more recent previous works The Universe of Us and <Sea of Strangers where I, respectively, had an overwhelming sense of omnipotent vastness with the former and a moodier sense of flowing with the latter in regards to the topic of love.

With Love Looks Pretty on You, there was this fierceness I felt in many of the poems. It's wasn't love making you weaker, it was love making you stronger, and if it's not making you stronger, then be done with it. There's still plenty of rumination on the loss of love, and what it feels when a love / relationship doesn't work out, but I didn't feel as much a pang of sadness as I felt in Sea of Strangers. While the poems reach out to the reader, I felt like they were more self-contained. I felt like the "voice" of the poems was more general than speaking directly, or connecting directly, with the reader.

Overall, I enjoyed this collection a lot, and as always my favorites are the brief one-liners that always pack an emotional punch.

This collection was so moving and beautiful and each and every poem was such a delight to read. I loved the different styles of poems and prose throughout and how well they worked together. This is only the second Lang Leav collection I've read, and I honestly loved it so much <3

"In the wrong hands, your past is a weapon."

---

To be honest, I haven't read much poetry before, but I've heard a lot about Lang Leav, so I wanted to give this work a try. The prose itself was beautiful and her prose and poetry on misogyny was well done, but overall I thought it was a bit shallow and contradictory. Perhaps I'm just not the right audience for this sort of work. I've never had an all encompassing love (sadly) so I couldn't truly relate.

However, I will say that some of Leav's poems really touched me. 'Anxiety' was one of them, I instantly recognized myself in her work at that moment.

Although this wasn't my cup of tea, I can understand why people praise Leav's poetry.

Poetry collections are always a hit and miss for me. However, this one sort of fell in the middle of it. Some of the poems were so open and honest I can see many readers empathize and find themselves in Leav's words. Others, however, felt almost recycled from various poetry collection I've had the pleasure of reading this year. Then again, poetry (as all literature) is highly subjective, so the ones I didn't connect with might be just what some readers need to hear.
I did love Leav's writing style and the empowering messages especially geared towards young women.
All in all, this was a pleasant and quick read

I've read and enjoyed a couple of Lang Leav's poetry bundles in the past, so I was drawn to her newest poetry bundle coming out next year as well. I know I don't read a lot of poetry, but I like to step out of my comfort zone every once in a while and read something different. Unfortunately, I can't say Love Looks Pretty On You turned out to be an entirely positive experience. There was just something about the writing style and tone this time around that didn't manage to convince me completely. I found that the poems in Love Looks Pretty On You lacked proper cohesion between them and there was no absolute theme and obvious connection between all of them. Instead of the positive tone I was expecting from the title, there were a lot of negative feelings portrayed in the poems. Not bad perse, but not what I expected and somehow I wasn't able to connect to most of the poems. I wasn't too sure about the style and form of most of the poems and thoughts included. It wasn't a bad read, but by no means her strongest bundle either.

This was my first collection by Lang Leav, and I am certainly going to read her other work.

I loved that this was a collection of both poetry and prose, and also that multiple types of poetry were represented, as it’s very common for poets to find a certain style and stick to it.

Lang Leav’s writing is very moving, and I bookmarked a good third of the book to go back and reread. I felt connected to the writing as soon as I read the first page. Every piece in this collection felt direct, yet delicate, and deeply honest.

This collection of poems was exactly what I expected it to be: a quick, easy read that filled my soul and calmed my brain.

What to call this book? Poetry, guide, reminiscence? Some poems were painfully adequate for me, others I could relate to with my past self (selves?). The poet actually does a lot of talking to her old self. What's more, there's even a poem she wrote when she was only 12! And it completely matched the book, too!

The poems are mostly written from a young woman's perspective, and they deal with things we all feel sometimes in our lives. They're so obvious things and sentiments, but it feels so good to see them plainly written down. It's nice to feel others go through the similar little (and not so little) experiences that you do!

The wording is very simple and easy to understand, and at first I thought it's... well, not very poetic - then I realized I'm only through like half of the collection, and I highlighted a crazy amount of lines! And that's right because it's so simple. It's beautiful in its simplicity.

The greatest personal experience I had with this collection was the universal feeling of not being alone. Some poems I could more relate to, there were also some I couldn't as much, but all in all that warmth was running through me that meant all people, all women has some experiences, feelings, phases in common. Reading these books I didn't feel like the poet tried to be cleverer than me, it was all about being simple and relatable.

As an avid Lang Leav fan who enjoys her beautiful style that is symplistic yet raw with so much depth like she sees inside your soul.
The minute this title was available it was a much needed addition for me to devour and that I did in a few short hours.
A wonderfully rich, tender loving yet complex collection with elements of openness and longing all lending to an overall theme of falling in love, being loved and being all consumed by love.
This was a much needed saving grace after the dismal offerings that was Love & Misadventures , thankfully this collection has restored my faith in this poetry elite.
Love looks pretty on you; shared a window into the personal growth and depth of Lang's journey reflected in the deeply moving, connective and touching prose.

Reading Lang's poetry & prose has always been like having a catchup with your best friend and baring your souls to one another over many a bottle of wine and this is her talent, that ability to connect informally just like a good girlfriend.
A thoroughly enjoyable collection written from the heart thankyou Lang Leav. 4.5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for this Advanced readers copy in exchange for a review.
(All opinions are my own and are not influenced in anyway)

This book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When I studied poetry at university, one thing that my lecturer told us was to avoid overloading your poetry with abstract nouns, such as ‘love’ and ‘hate’. Knowing this, I thought that having a whole collection that’s sole subject is love a rather risky move.

Unfortunately, I found that the poems didn’t respond to the subject in a new or innovative way. The imagery was rather cliché. The word choices could have been stronger. I found many weak enjambments and plenty of alternatives within the poems that could have heightened tension.

I think that having the subject of this collection as love weakened it as a whole. Poems felt familiar and repetitive and this might not have been as obvious if the collection was broken up by different subjects, but still had an overall theme.

My favourite poem in the collection was Twenty-Seven. I thought that it proved Leav has talent as a writer and can go on to write many more sophisticated and technically clever poems.

I’ll be honest that I had been avoiding reading any of Lang Leav’s books after reading a few poor reviews and snippets from her first two poetry collections. Since it has been a few years and I’ve been greatly enjoying poetry, I decided to give this author a chance once I spotted the ARC and I was actually pleasantly surprised. Love Looks Pretty on You is Leav’s seventh published work and it’s clear that she has grown as a writer.

The issue that I had previously seen in some of Leav’s old poems was that they were overly simple, full of silly rhymes and meaningless purple prose. In this new collection I was pleased to find a great deal of maturity in Leav’s words as a young woman that has grown up learning the joy of love, the pain of loss, the anger that comes with betrayal, and the subtle regret over missed opportunities. Many of her poems still contained rhymes, but they had an easy flow to them while still discussing some very grown up themes. I particularly enjoyed the longer more meditative pieces such as Letter to the Past. Many of them were insightful and were like snippets of the author’s life.

Now there is still patches of pesky purple prose that spend a good deal of time describing flowery scenes of nature or light and I really don’t care for these types of empty passages. I know that it’s trying to paint a picture for the reader, but I really find the overabundance of physical descriptors to be meaningless and boring, so I had to take a star off off of my rating for that. Relying too heavily on flowery descriptions to make a sentence more interesting seems to be a bad habit of many modern young poets.

Overall, it’s good to see Leav coming into her own and developing a style that is uniquely her. I enjoyed this collection and will be looking into more of her other work in the future.