I was so excited going into this collection, especially following the first poem, but I felt most of these pieces were too literal for my taste. Very specific events were described in a beautiful fashion, but little was left up to the reader to translate for themself. The illustrations were beautiful, but also very literal depictions of the events rather than seeing the artist's interpretations of the poetry.

Thank you to NetGalley and April Gloaming Publishing for providing me with an ARC of this collection.

I gave this a two out of five stars. I didn’t connect to any of the poems and I felt like it was dragging on. I liked the illustrations and a few poems but they weren’t very memorable.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Thanks NetGalley!

I'd say Rituals was a short, quick read. The poetry was thought-provoking. I enjoyed the majority of the book, although some poems just didn't hit the mark for me.

Rituals was a quick, short read. The poetry was very descriptive, although at times a little too flowy and confusing. Overall I enjoyed the book, and ended up thinking about it after I read it.

Wonderful poetry. I enjoyed the poems and they were beautiful. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing the arc

I didn’t enjoy this poetry collection at all. It was basically 100 pages of poetry and 97 pages were filler pages to make a book. The poetry wasn’t written very well and it just didn’t make any sense to me with the way the layout was completed. I won’t be reading anything else by this author..

I was drawn by the cover of this book. The poetry, however, isn't one that fits with me. The topics are dark but I can't relate to them in the least and the descriptiveness of each poem is crude. I admit I don't very much mind the style in which is written as it is very realistic but the words themselves or the 'message' behind it wasn't one that resonated with me. As for the illustrations, they were fine but it was nothing eye-catching or extraordinary.
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I did enjoy a particular set of lines from Asylum:
“I was in one piece once until my mind bent and broke like a river.”

I managed to get to 50% of this book and just gave up, the topics this author writes about I just couldn’t fully connect with and a few were confusing to read.