》"There's stability in the aftermath of instability. There's beauty in hard transitions."

I don’t usually read poetry but whenever I see a really cute cover on Net Galley I can’t resist myself, especially when that same poetry collection talks about mental health.

That’s how I ended up reading Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back. And that’s how I ended up loving it!

Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back is a poetry collection in form of a mix tape; there is a Side A and a Side B. In Side A we can find poems titled “tracks” and in Side B we can find the remixes of those tracks which are basically the same poems but in a unique form of blackout poetry.

I was really enjoying Side A, but definitely Side B made me put this book on my wishlist. That Side B made this whole poetry collection way more original that I was expecting, and it was definitely my favorite part.

There were a lot of poem that really touched me. The main subject of this collection of poems is mental health, (toxic) relationships, substance abuse, sex, trauma and grief. There’s also a trigger warning in the beginning on the book which is highly appreciated (I think more books should have this) that also lists gun control, suicide, violence, natural disasters and death.

Every poem has its own music, its song, at the end it says “currently listening to…”, and I loved this detail since the whole collection it’s suppose to be a mixtape. Also, I loved that fact that in the remixes, since the blackout poetry changed sometimes the meaning of the original poems (since it was a completely different poem), it also changed the song it was currently playing. These little details it’s what I always love to find in the books I read and enjoy.

Overall, an amazing and warming experience about selfcare and mental health and growth. I haven’t read anything by Alicia Cook before but certainly this poetry collection won’t be the last thing. I highly recommend this poetry collection for… well, anyone! If you love poetry, go ahead. And If you don’t, try it, it’s absolutely worth it.

Thank you so much to Net Galley and the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Since I first saw the title of this book, it was like “this is it, this is my type of book”. I could relate so much to the forgetting to text back situation that it’s a little bit embarrassing. And then we have the cover.
The whole mixtape design was something unique and made the whole experience feel more personal, like we had the chance to get to know Alicia better through her song recommendations by the end of each poem.
I could relate to some of them, but side A was a bit too long for me (the book is basically divided into side A and side B). Sometimes it’d feel a bit repetitive, so I took a really long time to finish it, which is quite the opposite when I read poetry.
On Side B, Alicia revamps side A, creating “remixes”. These remixes are usually one short sentence made entirely with words from the original one. I especially loved the fact that they would sometimes sum up what she was trying to say, but, other times, they’d add on the original one.

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

Sorry I haven't Texted you back is a beautiful collection of poetry and presented in a unique and interesting way.

This book is presented as a mix tape with two sides: the first draft then the remix.

Each poem is meaningful and slips under your skin making you feel less alone and more understood. So many poems in this book resonated with me! I thoroughly enjoyed this collection and loved the second half with the remix too.

**Thank you to NetGalley, the author, & the publisher for a chance to read & review an E-ARC of this novel!**

For me, this was an impactful & quick read. I love poetry collections & this one had a unique writing style. I really enjoyed it overall. Please find my extended feedback below...along with some spoilers (beware).
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Things I Liked:
-the way the poems were told in side A versus side B
-how the side B section were re-written versions of the side A section (very clever & creative)
-the topics that were covered (mental health, self-esteem, self-perception, etc.)
-the lyricism of the writing style
-the creative cover

Things That Didn't Sit Quite Right With Me:
-I think it would have been awesome to have some illustrations to go with the poems

Overall, I gave this collection 4 stars. It was an impactful & resonating read for me. I think it would be a great read for those who enjoy poetry or collections with themes of mental health, self-love, & relationships.

Wow! I just love this poetry collection alongwith relevant song recommendations with each poetry!

I mean that's the tea I love to slow sip and savour.

This collection is for you as much as it's for me if you want to read how it feels like you are not being understood and people keeps misjudging you.

This collection is for you as much as it's for me whose mental state and day-to-day struggling through it all is being questioned and judged as our inability and weaknesses.

This collection is for you as much as it's for me if you find solace in music.
I heavily rely on my favourite NCT unit k-pop groups for my daily dose of inspiration and as a way to actually shun off all the negativity and me being misunderstood everyday.

I love the content structure. I love the writing. It's so accurate and touch my deepest emotions. I never felt this understood.

I love how creative yet simple and relevant the poetry titles are as tracks! Both side A and Side B work pretty well and so well organised. Love the concept.

I love this collection. I really want to get the physical copy of this one as soon as possible!

The book is coming out on October 6th!!!! Excited❤️

Thanks NetGalley for the advanced reader copy 💯

** A copy of Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back was provided by the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review **

I first learnt of Alicia through her previous collection, Stuff I've Been Feeling Lately. With Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back, Alicia has cemented her place as a contemporary poet whose work I admire. I love the structure of Side A and Side B, the former with full poems and the latter with blackout poetry. As a music lover, I greatly appreciated Alicia's song pairings for each poem!

I really love this collection. It was more powerful than the first and I absolutely love the format cook uses

I think the concept and idea is really cool. I’m old enough to know what tapes so felt like a throwback and instead of lyrics to songs they were poems.

This is the kind of book I had to sit with for a few days after I read it because it was so relatable. I’m trying to read more poetry books, and a friend on Netgalley recommended I check this out. The title of this book drew my attention because from time to time, I’m up late at night thinking of many unsaid conversations, and this has been magnified especially in recent times.

I loved seeing the two sides for each poem, with each discussing an alternative meaning -- this is something that I don’t usually see when I’m reading and it really gave the poems more depth than beyond what you capture at the surface. The blackout poetry added a physical touch to the e-book -- words were circled in certain shapes and I felt that really added to the alternate meaning of each poem. It was a good balance of talking about the dark, messy moments in life and contrasting it for finding and falling back in love in something as simple as a daily routine. I would definitely recommend this book, and plan on checking out more of Alicia Cook’s work in the future.

I dnfed this book of poems at pane 60, this couldn't keep me interested at all. It took a while for me just to read those 60 pages.

Raw and poignant. This poetry collection was hard-hitting and so relatable. Cook has a talent for describing the emotions that we feel and make it so tangible. The simplicity of her writing made the poems so much more genuine and real. Additionally, I loved the mixtape concept with different sides. The remixes were brilliant and I had to pause for a moment to absorb the words.

I loved the addition of the songs at the end of each poem. I am music-orientated and this made my reading experience so much more immersive. I could feel the pain, loneliness, anxiety and hope that Cook was trying to convey.

This was my first time reading Alicia Cook's poetry and it will not be the last! I look forward to more works from her.

I adored this book! So many parts of this book spoke to my soul! And the music! Such a lovely touch! Dealing with all of today's stresses is super hard and this book made me feel less lonely, less jaded. Feeling heard and seeing some of these feelings out into words was such and experience!

I love poetry but I have found that sometimes I am surprised by the content and potential triggers in that content. I can’t say just how much I appreciate the trigger warnings at the beginning of this book, especially since it included one of my triggers. I did read through the book, skimming over the sections that were more triggering for me, but I’m glad I got to try something new. It doesn’t feel right for me to “rate” someone else’s thoughts and very vulnerable words and feelings on the page. I will say that this was a bit too heavy for me personally and I know that while these words are very real and many people go through these challenges and have my full prayers and hopes with them, this was a bit too heavy for me to fully enjoy as a reader. Perhaps because I know friends who have been through similar experiences and thought processes as this author, this poetry seemed to be a little too real for my liking and hit close to home. That certainly doesn’t take away from its validity in any way, far from it! I was just in the mood for something that provided more of an escape, a lighter mood than what reality presents us sometimes. That’s more of a reflection on me then on the author or publisher. Thank you netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book. I love the cover and the thematic elements (tracks/side A + B) inside the book.

I loved this book from page one! There wasn't one poem that I didn't enjoy, and a lot of them were very relatable. I'm not usually very into poems and I don't read a lot of them, but I really liked this one, and I loved the discussion of mental health and other people's responses to mental health.

The first good thing about this book was the trigger warning in the beginning. Not a lot of books have this even though it should be a given that if you write books with content that might be triggering, of course you should put a trigger warning.

The first poem started out with "I tell you I feel tired, and you say, "but you slept for twelve hours," and I knew you didn't get it."
I really liked how the poems showed how other people reacts to people with mental health issues because some people just don't get it. A lot of different issued were discussed in these poems, such as mental health, violence, and trauma, and they were talked about in a very respectful way that I really liked.

The best part about this book (to me) was the layout and the mixtape design of it. The poems are called 'track one', 'track two', 'track three' etc.
'Side B' of the mixtape is called 'the remixes', and I really loved the layout of that. The poems are redesigned into much shorter ones, and a lot of the time it ends up just being one sentence for each poem.

This is such a beautiful poetry book!

It was written like a mixtape with 92 poems (or what the author calls them, “tracks”) on Side A and a remix of the same 92 poems on Side B. And boy I tell you that Side B was full of surprises!

Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back is a poetry collection that focuses on the topic surrounding mental health expressing the ups and downs of her life - love, grief and hope.

I personally found that in this poetry book, the author not only expresses how she felt but also gave a voice to those struggling with the same feelings. They not only helped me grieve with my struggles but also changed how I perceive my situation with hope.

I truly enjoyed all the prose and poems. They were all so beautifully written and were easy to understand. It’s always a wonder how such short phrases hold so much meaning and depth and power.

Thank you Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing me a copy of this book through NetGalley. All opinions in this review are my own.

Poetry is always a bit subjective. This means that it is hard to leave a review on.
That being said, the poems in this book by Alicia Cook touched me in ways I didn’t realize I needed.

This was a unique collection, I really loved parts of it, and some other parts weren't that great to me. I loved the messages, and how realistic and raw they were. The poems are about depression and obsession and neglect and fear and losing people either to death or they just left and dealing with your inner demons and finding acceptance from the world and yourself. All of which were great and felt so real to me. Also, it's got this unique experience where each poem (or track) ends with a songs suggestion, and you could make a playlist out of it.

What I didn't like very much were the repetitiveness of some expressions and metaphors and the second half of the book "the remix part" with the black-out poetry was sometimes a bit confusing and I couldn't figure out in which direction or order I am supposed to read the new poem. Also the second half of the book is the same poems with black-out poetry on top of them, not new poems.

Overall, I enjoyed the time I spent reading it.

I thank Netgalley for the digital ARC.

I did not enjoy this book, but I seem to be in the minority. I thought the writing was bland. I did not like the black out poetry, but it was the better section of the two types. I like writing on the topics covered, and I appreciate the willingness to be vulnerable and raw about it all. However I thought the execution was lacking and ultimately I wouldn’t recommend. Yet!! It seems that many do enjoy it, so that works out well!

There is much to draw readers to Alicia Cook's latest offering of her poetry. It is dark, painful, piercing, searching and REAL. This woman definitely knows how to do real, and to express herself in ways that make me wonder how she knows me so well when we've never met.

I love the power she finds in herself, the blaring self acceptance when just two pages earlier she may have wondered why she wasn't enough. I see someone struggling to understand life with all its messiness, to grow stronger for the battles that are always near, to find joy where she can. An acknowlegement of the pain and yet an appreciation of being alive, though scarred.

Wonderful!! Loved the format of the mix tapes as well.

My thanks to NetGalley and Andrews McNeel Publishing for allowing me to read a copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. All opinions expressed here are indeed my own.

Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back is a nice poetry collection by Alicia Cook, and I loved the creativity of how the poems were portrayed in the book.

Side A is a collection of 92 poems, that are deeply emotional and tackle the difficulties of someone dealing with depression and anxiety, as well as how it relates to their own self worth and how they handle relationships with other people. Each poem is accompanied by a song track that reflects the meaning of the poem, with artists ranging from Selena Gomez to Eminem to Coldplay.

Side B contains the same poems, but is a "remix" where each poem has writing on it, with certain words circled or crossed out, that either changes the original meaning of the poem or emphasizes the meaning.

I really appreciated the creativity of this book. Many of the poems touched my heart as someone who struggles with mental illness. However, i feel like some of the poems didn't exactly land and hit their mark like others did. It's definitely a good read for fans of poetry.