I loved this book, it has really good poetry.
I received this book through Net Galley and the Publisher Gallery Books, and was not required to give a positive review.

Delicate, elegant, and hopeful poetry with full of optimistic energy that heals the lost souls and broken hearts. I love the way it expresses the feelings about depression and grief. It feels like each single word speaks out loud the pain we have struggled with, also bringing the courage to make us fight against demons inside our minds and find a glimpse of light in a forlorn valley.

There are 4 parts, which is separately about love never lived, matter over mind, everything BLACK, and save yourself, in the poetry. Each part seems like the stages of knowing the actual wound inside us, finding out sources of pain, trying to seek the hope from the darkness, and helping ourselves be reborn. That's how these poems impress me. While reading, I feel that I've been understood. It knows the pain and negative feelings rooting deep in my heart. It's not easy to get them away; however, the words tender those scars and let me understand it's not my fault to be weak. We all suffer from those indescribable sorrow, so we are not alone.

becoming. Become the one who know how powerful we can be. Become the one having faith and will to be a survivor.

Here's one of my favorite quotes that I want to share with at last:

we are created in the darkness
forced into the light

I love poetry in every shape and form. Free verse, contemporary poetry is my favorite form of poetry, because of the strong emotional appeals they contain, their turn of phrase, their rhythm and their distinct dissonance.

So when I got my hands on becoming by Reenada Williams, I was truly excited. Unfortunately, and I don't know what euphemism to use here, William's short poems were more like tumblr entries and Instagram captions than actual poetry. To be perfectly honest, they were rather generic.

Modern poetry is relaxed and has plenty of freedom. Modern poetry often involves breaking sentences into phrases or stanzas. I know all of this. However, good modern poetry uses that particular style to create dissonance--something that, when overused (as was in this book), just feels like lazy writing.

Furthermore, the poetry book is essentially about growth, about transformations and learning but because of how unorganized the book is, it's hard to see any of those things. There's virtually no story, no start-to-finish narrative. Now this wouldn't have been a problem if the individual poems had a message, or a story or any kind of point to them at all.

In summary, I don't think I would be recommending this to anybody. Perhaps readers who are absolutely new to poetry will enjoy Renaada Williams book. Fans of Rupi Kaur might enjoy them too. Regardless, I still cannot bring myself to recommend it to anybody, even those who are exploring the genre--I'd recommend Elizabeth Acevado, or Andrea Gibson or Aracelis Girmay instead.

This book was a pretty quick read due to the length of the poems. There was a lot of bite-sized platitudes & moments where this author's intention to uplift was very clear. I really appreciated the mind over matter section and found myself bookmarking a few of those poems. However, overall, I wasn't as drawn into this as I'd like to have been. We had some that were as short as one-liners which is nice but it felt more like I was reading through someone's jotted down notes. That has more to do with ME than the book as I am more appreciative of poetry that contains imagery and builds up. I will add that there was some very raw moments, a lot of honesty, and inspiration to be found throughout this book, which I valued.

becoming. is a beautiful poetry collection that covers feminism, sexuality, race and mental health. There's so much hope in it and several of the poems are empowering to read.

Becoming. is a poetry collection that covers feminism, sexuality, race and mental health. It is a collection of short, personal and emotional pieces of the author’s life journey, love and loss. At the end, we see a message of hope shinning through a tunnel of darkness.

I was very moved by this collection of poetry and indeed kept agreeing to many things that were written. I found myself saying Amen! to poems speaking of self-love that were truly empowering. Even to the poems of loss and self-hate, I was feeling the same pain as I’ve been through then before. I was also enraged by the racism towards the black community.

With all that said, it is clear that I really enjoyed reading this poetry book and would recommend it to others. This is the reason why I love self-help poems and continue to search for such book collections.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Andrews McMeel Publishing through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I thought this collection of poems were okay. If it seems like something you'd like maybe you should check it out. For me I need to feel like I can connect to the poetry for me to enjoy it. To me poetry is a very personal thing to each person.

Absolutely wonderful collection. The poems range from heartwrenching to empowering, all of them are beautiful.
The title is what initially drew me in, I love poetry collections that reflect part of a personal journey. These poems are unapologetically honest, a truly inspirational collection.

This short poetry collection by Renaada Williams floats around themes of suicide, depression, Black pride, and heartbreak. The poems are pithy and often broken up word-by-word. It took me fewer than thirty minutes to read through about 150 pages of content.

I'll preface this by saying that I did not enjoy the book. Many of the poems read like the vague sentences about heartbreak shared around on Facebook by people afraid to be more specific. I think that the poems each could have been more powerful were they separated by instances of detailed storytelling, but as it stands, the collection is cliched, monotonous, and saccharine. Had this taken the form of a poem-a-day calendar (and thus given readers more time to digest the quips of 2012-Tumblr poetry), perhaps the speaker's message would have been impactful.

In the majority of the collection, there is one speaker addressing two interlocutors: one is the "you" that broke the speaker's heart, the other is the "you" who can relate to her heartbreak. Later, another emerges: the "us" of the Black community. This section had tangible feeling and gave truth to the speaker's experiences, and it was nice to (if only momentarily) diverge from the monotony of the rest of the collection.

Otherwise, every other line is either wildly self-congratulatory (the back cover reads: "...through her books she seeks to enlighten others while helping bandage their emotional wounds") or shallow in the name of being oceanic. It isn't raw; it's over-done.

Perhaps this is a worthwhile read if you enjoy mantra-like Instagram affirmations. It wasn't for me.

2/5 stars. I received this book electronically from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This is a beautiful and touching book of poems that are truly heartfelt. I could feel the authors pain in afew of these poems and so many in the first 1/3 of this book were so relateable to me they could have been my experiences.
This book is deep and meaningful and many of the poems are only very short but very well done.

It’s National Poetry Month so I’m trying to read as much poetry as I can and I enjoyed this collection! I can totally relate to the poems about love, breakups, acceptance, and hope. I couldn’t relate as closely to the poems about depression, therapy, and race but they were honest and I appreciate the author sharing them with the world so others don’t feel so alone.
I think fans of poets like Lang Leav, Jennae Cecelia, Amanda Lovelace, and Rupi Kaur will enjoy “Becoming.”

Thank you Netgally and the publisher for the chance to read this ebook for free.

This review also appears here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3295501991

Every book published by Andrews McMeel is an automatic buy for me at this point, and the wonderful thing is that they never disappoint! becoming. is such a lovely, powerful modern collection of poems that I will definitely return to again and again!

Love can be really painful. Specially when someone is capable of being in love deeply and perceiving the depth even when the other person is not. The poetry in this book is a world of pain. The author takes you on a journey inside her mind which is troubled by the people in her life and the way they affect her life. How do people embrace darkness and love being broken and still want others to accept and love them in a manner which satisfies their core? How do people become everything for someone in one moment and then no-one the other moment?

These are stories about moving on and stories about not able to let go. These are stories about both forgetting and remembering simultaneously. They show various aspects to love, pain, darkness and judgements,

This collection of poems is truly beautiful, powerful and inspired. I feel like this book is a journey that everyone at one point or another must take, Renaada is an author follow. To read her words is to become something bigger, something better. I truly can’t wait to share this with my loved ones. Unlike a lot of books of poetry, she doesn’t get repetitive or tired. I honestly couldn’t get enough, and I can’t wait for more

This book is amazing. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this. I love reading all sorts of poetry and this is one of those books where I will go back to and read again. This book goes over the subjects of relationships, depression, self-esteem and self-empowerment. I would recommend this book for all sorts of readers.

The premise of the book was "Everyone understands life us hard, but self-love and dedication will always be key. Becoming is a beautiful debut collection of poetry centering around themes of feminism, sexuality, race and mental health."
It's full of over 100 poems, some longer, some shorter.
While I liked the premise and also most of the poems, I think there was more potential there. At some points the author was hinting at something but wasn't putting it into words. And don't get me wrong, normally that is what makes poetry good, a layer underneath all the words that you have to discover on your own. But in this case I saw the potential for the author to give that layer but there wasn't enough "hidden" meaning in it.
I still really liked a lot of stuff because it resonated with me (for example: "i am waiting at the end of the promise you forgot you made."), but unfortunately I missed that layer underneath a couple of times.
So in the end I think I'm giving it 3.5/5 stars

🌞🌞🌞 Actually 4.5/5⭐
I related so mutch wit this poetry collection.

First, I liked how it was written in a way you see a jurney. Not even a growth, but how the author went down in the first place.

I loved the way that she talked to me through her poems, like we were the same person.

I loved the way every poem was written, not like a simple poem, but like she was talking to me. It was amazing.

This is one of my favourite poetry collections I've evere read.

Firstly, I would like to thank NetGalley and Andrews McMeel for giving me the opportunity to read this book for an honest review.

The fact that this book had been self published a few years ago by Renaada is very inspiring and to then get a publishing deal with a publishing company that has published women like Amanda Lovelace and Rupi Kaur is such a great achievement. Having rebranded the book with a fabulous new cover and a beautiful layout inside with brand new poetry as well I really hope that this book does well. I really enjoyed reading it. The amount of topics covered in this poetry anthology is mind blowing. Heartbreak, loss, grief, self worth, depression, suicide and so much more. I knew that I would love this book from the very being just from reading the dedication. It is dedicated to Renaada's Granddad and the poem that she wrote was so beautiful. Having recently lost my Grandma I could really relate to each word.

There were a few things that I didn't like. The fact that this book has no capital letters hurt my head. The most hurtful one was lowercase 'i'. It is supposed to be capitalised. Also none of the poems had titles which makes it harder to refer back to favourite pieces and I've always be taught to title my work. Another thing was that every single poem was centralised on the page. This was only done for aesthetic purposes which I do on Instagram but I would never do it in actual published work. My tutor on my creative writing course just told me off for centre aligning a poem. Only ever do it for a reason! Don't over use it. Also there was overuse of one word lines in a lot of the poems which should only be done for impact. But I was able to overlook all of this because I loved the content so much. If I could release a book any where near this standard I would be so happy.

I like this poetry a lot. It shared stories about women and lots of things related to it. Therefore, I feel like this book is my voice.

Great book! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Thanks to the Publisher for giving me the opportunity to read it in advance