There was a lot of insight and deep poetry in this book. I did not expect to like it as much as did. Will definitely keep an eye out for the authors future work.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

Honestly? I don't want to put to words how much I did not like the book. The cover was stunning, which is why I wanted to read it, but the poetry...

Not to put down depressed thirteen-year-olds who've never read let alone written poetry before and possess no natural talent for it, but this was like one of them had written it. An awkward and cringey emo phase turned into a book. Too much trying to be this and that, edgy and beautiful at the same time, turned out a gigantic mess.

There were a few good lines here and there, but all in all, this was not a good read.

This is a competent collection with a few truly stand out moments. The use of motif and metaphor to communicate theme was done well. While most of the poems failed to connect for me personally on some fundamental level, this is an author who has something to say and as she masters the form further, will doubtless produce some powerful writing.

🌟🌟🌟🌟/5

I was provided with an ARC through netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

"You wanted me to be a moth, when I was always a butterfly"

This is a very dark, angry, brutal and lustful book of poetry. There are loads of trigger warnings for abuse and self harm. This poety isn't for everyone but it deffinatly got under my skin. It was well written and the emotions came across very well.

*The Lessons We're Taught*
"Men are taught to take what they please Women are taught to relinquish their treasures with a smile.
It's why women mistake brutality for love And men believe a woman's body is for them to seize without consequences."

This was a great read, though I was slightly underwhelmed. It was an interesting read, with some very moving pieces.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from this collection of poetry. Most of the poetry I’ve read recently has been about love and healing, and this was quite the opposite. Each and every poem is twisted in some sort of way. I didn’t hate any of the poems, but the vast majority just didn’t speak to me on a deeper level. I have to appreciate the beauty of the writing and the obvious care and emotion that went into writing the poems, I just couldn’t feel it for myself. I’m sure that others would enjoy this collection quite a bit more than I did, which is not to say that I didn’t like it. I just don’t think I’m in the correct mindset to be able to really connect to this dark poetry collection.

Dark poems.

I read this collection in different places and different times and every time I felt different about it. The first poems were strong and powerful, with their musicality and their words’ game. Then I lost interest, then I found it again. Maybe it was a personal problem, I don’t know. Some poems I understood, some were flat, some were very good.
I want to say that a lot of them seemed like they were songs, just because they had a sound and a good rhythm.
I enjoyed myself reading this collection, maybe because I’ve never read anything like this. It was strange and unfamiliar but interesting and entertaining. There are a lot of warning about entering this book: there are violence scenes and acts and everyone must be informed. Anyway, I liked the book. It’s really long, though. So, if you want to read it you need more time than other collections. I think this book is worth the time, tbh.

Nothing is as sweet or as deep as the first cut, at least that's what they say. Bleed Like Me is a collection of poems, some of them are beautiful heart rent sentiments while others are incredibly dark. Truly most of the poems were a bit dark for my taste, but with Valentine's day just around the corner I thought I would give it a go.

I posted the following review on both my blog and on Goodreads.

Book 11 of my 2019 Reading Challenge
read from January 19 - 29

Bleed Like Me: Poems for the Broken
by Azzurra Nox

Summary (via Goodreads)
Expected publication: February 2019 (I read pre-publication thanks to NetGalley)
This is how you draw a broken heart:
Dip your fingers in blood and don't
Hesitate to botch the final project.

This is a book about love and the wounds that it can bring. It explores the exhilaration of first love, the damage of unrequited love, and the distress of abandonment. The poems are little memories that come alive, a journey between reality and fantasy, often mingling as one. Fragments of life depicted in words. This is a collection of poems both cruel and sweet. The poems depict the difference between how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. But most of all, this is a kaleidoscope of emotions that are multiplied and amplified as the reader looks into the window of a young woman's heart.

My Opinion
2 stars

*I received an electronic copy of this book via NetGalley and would like to thank the author and/or publisher for the opportunity to read and honestly review it*

Poetry is so subjective that I'm really not comfortable giving a full critique of it. What I can say is that is the poetry was very descriptive and generated a visceral reaction but it wasn't something I personally enjoyed. I liked the content of Part II a lot more than Part I.

It felt a little melodramatic but I can chalk that up to being so far removed from personally experiencing heartbreak (I'm 39 and have been with my husband for 19 years). In most situations when I didn't really like it but also don't feel like the target audience, I will rate it a neutral 3 stars and move on. The reason I didn't in this case is because even though I feel the melodrama might lend itself to a younger audience, the number of poems that referenced suicide as a solution to stop feeling the pain of heartbreak makes me hesitate in a recommendation to someone younger. There's a difference between being broken-hearted and being a little unhinged; if I read any of her poems as social media statuses I would be reaching out to her to make sure she's safe and okay.

I really enjoy emotional, angst-y poetry in the vein of Lang Leav, Rupi Kaur, Nikita Gill and a few others of the recent "Instagram Poets" but this just wasn't for me.
I didn't really connect with the poems and while I could see the appreciate the emotion within them I just didn't feel it.

I was provided with an e-ARC of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I think it is pretty obvious I didn't like this book. It is not my genre of poetry, plus I struggled to get to the end.

First of all, I didn't enjoy the style, since I felt like it was a strange mix between 2012 Tumblr and 2018 Twitter, meaning that the themes were depression and sex. I don't mind the themes per se, but I didn't like the way they were handled.

Moreover, I felt like this book was too pretentious at some point and the author tended to repeat herself.
Maybe I would have enjoyed this more if I read it when I was like fourteen, but as an almost twenty years old it seemed too edgy and Tumblr gothic girl style.

I think many others will love this, though. It just wasn't for me.

Bleed Like Me:Poems For The Broken
by Azzurra Nox
due 2-12-2019
Twisted Wing
3.5 / 5.0

The poems collected here are very personal, straight from the heart and confessional. Some are very long. Some are only a few lines long. All share her feelings of being broken, abandoned and reveal her smashed emotions and heart. Poems of loss, deception, yearning, infatuation, idolizing and falling in lust.
My favorites were ´Amoeba´; ´23:57´; ´Bag of Horrors´; ´Cold Attrition´; ´Unwanted´; Memoirs´ and ´You Can Change Who I Am´.
Thank you to Twisted Wings for an e-book ARC for a fair and honest review.
#BleedLikeMe #NetGalley

This collection is filled with dark and whimsical poems, that deal with deep emotional issues around love and human connection.

Sadly overall it wasn't for me. The poems were very dark at times, most concentrated on unrequited love and similar things, which also quickly got repetitive. After 84% of the collection, a second part with supposed more positive poems started, but at that point I had already lost interest and I also didn't feel like these later poems lightened anything up.
I do enjoy modern poetry, but I had big issues connecting to this one and everything just kept pulling me down without giving me any hope throughout. These poems really focus on the hurt and that's just not for me.

The writing is very good, beautiful at times. I did enjoy the Haiku that is at the end of of, other than that no other particular poem managed to stay fresh in my mind.
I think this collection would have been a better read had it been around half the size. Like this many poems felt repetitive and the darkness of most of them drowned out any hope the ending tried to build up.

I was pretty much blown away within the first few poems in this book.
I am honestly not the type of person who usually enjoy poetry, but these were so dark, twisted and melancholic that I ended up really enjoying them. I was drawn to the book solely because of the stunning cover, and I am glad I did. Of course not all poems was equally good, but I didn't expect that from a 303 page long book, and I honestly had to put the book down a few times, because it became a little too much and a little boring to read in one sitting. But an overall great collection of great poetry.

The poems in this collection are quite unique in that they're more in depth than some contemporary poetry out there. They are very dark and gothic and angry and very vivid. These poems won't be for everyone but they defiantly got under my skin!

A collection of poems from Azzura Nox sees us delve into a dark and dangerous assortment of lines that certainly have it’s moments of sparkle in the gloom.

At first reading this collection, I must admit I was not into it, but I do feel this collection does get stronger as it carries on - though I do feel this book could be so much better if it was maybe divided into periods of time as she recovers. Bleed Like Me has some real short blasts of feeling throughout this book but the poems are out of time order and they can feel a little out of place as they drown in the theme she is writing about in that part of the collection.

Not a book to allow you to be comfortable, the gothic, atmospheric tones sometimes do not sit comfortably in this book and I feel sometimes the lines come over as quite simple, not to mention a little odd (I wish I could take back Ecstacy, I really do). However there are poems like Crashing Stars and A Haiku For All The Boys I’ve Kissed that really are so good in this book - and proof this book gets better as it goes on.

This collection certainly is raw, honest and should come with a bunch of trigger warnings, I would not recommend this book to anyone whose suffered from trauma as I feel this wouldn’t be the right work for you at all, as the writer’s huge collection of poems covers a variety of difficult topics from self harm to miscarriage.

I just don’t know how I feel about this book, but I know it could have been so much more than it is, as you can see the talent is there but there’s just too much and too confused for me to feel it’s perfect.

Poems for the broken is a collection of dark and twisty short poems. I wanted to love this collection and while I did enjoy it somewhat, it felt like something most of us write in our teens. I really enjoyed the individual poems themselves however as a collection I felt they lacked an overall narrative or connection.

Bleed Like Me by Azzurra Nox is a rather dark collection of human emotion, completely raw, and beautifully written, making you want to come back for more, despite the feelings it disturbs within.

"She clawed her heart out so that you could crawl inside."

Usually I don't read much poetry, to be completely honest, but this book was a welcome surprise. It was very dark and at times borderline depressing, or a little crazy, however it does sum up the emotions that you feel when you're completely broken. That being said, when you read this I feel as if the current emotion that you're feeling has an effect on your opinion on the poetry, unless it's something more deep rooted, or that you've been through previously.

My only real complaints about this book is the fact that a lot of it was very, very similar. Some poems seemed to be carbon copy of others that I had already read earlier in the book, the more that I read on. That being said, anytime there wasn't a poem about being broken by a man or lover, it really stood out, and was a refreshing change that gave me the will to keep reading. There were many poems that made this book worth reading, some of my favorites being Farewell, Insanity Leads Me Here, Revelation, and Eva Marie.

"Give me your heart, so I can wear it on my chest."

Azzurra Nox I feel has some real spunk. After reading the author bio, and going through some of her poems I was completely enthralled by her and had super high hopes that the little I did know about her would carry through into the novel. In some moments I wasn't disappointed, however I feel like there definitely could have been way more "spunk" in her writing, not to necessarily keep it more uplifting, but to give it an edge to set it apart a little more.

Overall it was a good collection of poetry, I do not regret picking it up at all, and wouldn't mind looking into other books by this author in the future.

I’ve never reviewed poetry before but I found this experience enlightening. These
Poems are of a dark heart. But I can tell behind that sorrow is love but it’s the pain that is masking it. I liked most of them. The prose was easy to read. It wasn’t choppy or confusing. It’s a pretty straight forward pile of work.

I liked it. It’s good to read something real. About pain. About life and everything between. Because it’s not all sunshine and roses. It’s about the dark cloud and the rain that it brings.

And the saying goes, how to learn to dance in the rain...

4 stars

I want to thank the author, publisher and Netgalley for the ARC for a honest review.

Poems for the broken? Sounds like something I could get behind. Unfortunately, the style comes across as the dark, angsty feelings of a middle schooler. Because some of them reminded me of poetry I wrote in middle school. Some of these poems seem to romanticize suffering, depression, and self-harm, which again brings to mind an angsty teenager. Such topics can be very emotional and affecting; however, Bleed Like Me just didn’t seem to capture the reality behind them, and that disconnect prevented me from enjoying this poetry.

Note: I in no way am intending to minimize the suffering of the author. If her experiences inspired these poems, I applaud her for expressing her pain, because it is not easy to share such dark feelings.