I want to say upfront that I do not typically read poetry, but I am trying to broaden my genres, so I picked this one up!! I am so glad that I did!!

Gill's poetry skills are absolutely amazing!! She writes in a way that captures the human experience and pulls you in and gives you all the feels. So many of these poems hit close to home for me.

If all poetry is this good, I may just give this genre a try more often. I, for sure, will read more of Nikita Gill's poetry!!

4.5 Stars ( I received an e-arc from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review)

Nikita Gill is quite quickly becoming one of my favourite poetry authors, this was my introduction to her work. Since then I have picked up a few and read a couple of them, although this subject matter strays away from her typical content. Definitely much more emotionally charged and I think I can safely say that everyone can relate to these feelings. Highly recommend for those who are looking to start reading poetry.

This book of poetry was absolutely stunning. I'm new to reading poetry, but connected to several of the poems in this book. Nikita Gill has a way of capturing the human experience through her words. I can't wait to read more by her!

Nikita Gill is a favorite of mine and she definitely doesn’t disappoint. This collection of poetry includes what transpired for her during the Coronavirus lockdown of 2020 and goes very deep and personal into her heart & soul.

She shares words of hope and encouragement in the hardest times and rallies us to keep going. Her words are our words as well. She shows us the beauty in the darkest places.

Thanks to Netgalley, publisher and author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a lovely book of poems. I felt that it was pretty simple. But not it a bad way. I guess being set during covid made it feel relatable without trying too hard. Grief of all we’ve lost and dealing with it while still grieving.

Nikita Gill’s poetry has always held a special place in my heart, and the knowledge that she was releasing a collection of poetry from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic made me feel both anxious and excited.

And this collection did not fail to deliver. With a mix of poetry and prose, Gill’s words expose the nervous, anxious, gut churning emotions that I felt at the beginning of this pandemic but didn’t have the words to articulate.

Sometimes, in the middle of uncertainty, it is difficult to find hope in the future. And these poems show us how to find hope in our communities, our selves, our world.

I love Nikita Gill's poetry so much, and this was my favorite collection yet. Despite the incredibly emotional experience of reading this poetry collection about the pandemic while it is still ongoing, Nikita's optimism and hopefulness were a balm for my soul. I feel that we sometimes manage to have the inexplicable luck of picking up a book at exactly the right time, and that was me, reading this poetry collection tonight. I don't know if you'll ever see this review, Nikita, but if you do: thank you.

Summer 2021 (August);
~ Netgalley Arc

Thank you to Nikita Gill, Hachette Books, and Netgalley for this free arc for an honest review.

My love for Nikita Gil's poetry never flags. This gorgeous collection of pieces is poetry written during the first year of the COVID pandemic and it touches on so many of the universal feelings we had. The lows, the highs, the losses, the struggles were all feeling in every realm personal and professional. I felt and saw myself reflected in so many of these pieces from the alienation, the overwhelming silence, the ways things you loved drifted further from you, the celebrations of simply getting up, breathing, managing to shower. The continued need to hold on to the promise, believed or not, of the light at the end of the tunnel and the ending of this current holding pattern.

I will continue to love and follow her as long as she is writing.

Nikita Gill brings the strength and resiliance in poetry after the chaos that will be known forever as "2020" in the best way that everyone can relate to. For those struggling in isolation or burnout, its truly amazing to read our thoughts in a poetry form.

I'm embarrassed that a book that gave me so much hope and comfort during a dark time could also take me so very long to review. I wanted to shout my appreciation for Where Hope Comes From by Nikita Gill from the rooftops, but perhaps for fear of not doing it justice, or because most of my mental energy was focused on adulting while surviving each day of a global pandemic, and didn't leave much energy for writing/ creating on my own, or some other combination of factors, I did not. Instead, I read this book, slowly, in the evenings before I fell asleep, cherishing each gentle, hopeful poem, relating to so many of them. I'm not a poetry connoisseur, but I found the poems in this collection lovely as well as relatable, full of imagery of nature and the human heart and the impact of life-changing events on individual humans. What do the giant patterns of civilization and pandemics imprint upon humans in general, and specifically on individual humans? What does it mean to stay indoors? To hope against hope to survive, and to see one's loved ones survive? To struggle with loss, and broken relationships while also being grateful for our own continued existence?

I love Where Hope Comes From so much that I immediately preordered a copy, and it is now a cherished part of my library, with pages dog-eared and highlighted, from Nikita Gill's reflective forward, to Reasons to Live Through the Apocalypse to A Reminder from Smaller Beings to How to Be Happy Again. But perhaps the poem which resonates with me the most is simply titled It's 2020:

"And everyone I know is on the verge
of breaking down.
Or has broken down.
Or has felt more tragedies

than the cosmos truly intends
for a person to feel.
And it's hard to say
This too shall pass,

Because we don't know if it will.
None of the clichés work.
Not while the world
stands still.

All we can do is pray.
All we can do is not blame each other.
And wish we had enjoyed one another
a little longer the last time we were together.

What is left but
to promise that when we next meet,
we will be kinder.
And fight for a better future together."

So I am enduringly grateful that #NetGalley and Hachette granted me a temporary digital advanced copy of #WhereHopeComesFrom that I could cherish and find comfort in during these continued pandemic years. I cannot recommend this highly enough. I had never heard of Nikita Gill, or her Instagram poetry account, prior to requesting this book, but now I am going to seek out all her work, both published and online, and hope you will do the same.

What can I say? I am a huge Nikita Gill fan. I own almost all of her poetry collections. Her writing is always entertaining and a delight.

From mythology to modern times, her poems have it all. Not only that but they are easy to connect with and always relevant.

Gill brings all her skills and talents to the table in this new book of poems and stories. Highly recommend. Its heartening to see that in these hard COVID times, Gill was able to create something beautiful, real, and that we can all understand and connect to.

10/10 will probably buy for my own personal shelves as well as for the library where I work.

I received this advance copy from @netgalley in exchange for an honest review which I am going to attempt despite Gill’s writing being above and beyond my capabilities!

Where Hope Comes From is a true time capsule of the year 2020 from the master “keeper of their tales” (in her own words). A collection of poems, prose pieces and black and white watercolour paintings, each piece brings me back to a distinct point in last year while capturing the complexity of the emotions in each moment deftly and without sentimentality. Especially poignant are memorials for George Floyd, Elijah McClain and Breonna Taylor, with wishes for the futures they should have had. This collection is a must-read, especially to help sort out the many conflicting feelings that emerge as the after effects of 2020, and to help maintain and forge new connections through poetry and art.

In Where Hope Comes From, Nikita Gill presents the poetry and prose she wrote in response to life during lockdown and the pandemic. Her poems are very relatable and cover a variety of emotions that many who struggled through the last year know all too well.

I don’t often read poetry and wasn’t sure what to expect when I read the summary of Where Hope Comes From, but I found it a refreshing read and a piece of history I hope we can cherish when all things “covid” are over for good (hopefully one day soon).

I could really see the emotional journey of the author over the pandemic year, and the changes in the poetry… many are hopeful and about resilience, but many are less hopeful and I felt really captured the dark side of covid and the loneliness universally felt by so many of us. The artwork to go along with every poem was perfect…. haunting in some cases, and beautiful in others.

Thank you to NetGalley and of course the author for the opportunity to read this collection. Many of these poems and powerful thoughts will stay with me for a while! Would definitely recommend it to anyone and I’ll likely grab a purchased copy myself!

I am so glad that while the world stood still amidst the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, there were people like Nikita Gill, moving us with their words and helping us make sense of what our lives had become. If you have ever scrolled through Instagram or Pinterest looking for quotes or poems to help describe what you were feeling inside, you’ve likely come across a Nikita Gill poem or two. Her work is everywhere on social media, and she does a fine job of capturing the inexplicable emotions that live inside of us and putting those feelings to words.

Her new collection of poems, Where Hope Comes From, was written during the lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic, when people were forced to stay home and self-isolate in the name of saving life as we knew it. This was a time of great loneliness and death, of grief … and hope. Nikita Gill captures what all of us were feeling during those dark days, but also reminds us that with every great sorrow, there also comes hope for better days ahead. This book is one of the silver linings of the coronavirus pandemic … it serves as a gift to remind us what it truly means to be human.

This collection of poems was beautiful and healing. I found this a great answer to my feelings over the past year during the pandemic. I hope you enjoy this collection also.

Nikita Gill delivered a gem with her pandemic prose. I am indeed moved through the reading of her poems. Her attention to detail and fluidity of thought is powerful. Adults and most children alive during this time of coronavirus will remember what it is like to be isolated and to experience new phenomenon perhaps for the first time--such as scarcity on the grocery store shelves, or waves of painful emotion. This book is art and aid.

Poetry touching on some of the lived experiences of this entire pandemic. I really enjoyed the themes of the poems in this book which dealt with all kinds of things including - family, loss, trauma, love, renewal, loneliness etc. It was truly a reflection of what the 2020 year was for the world. There is a little bit of everything for everyone in this collection of poems. The poems aren't overtly long, they are easy enough to get though. I was able to read this in one sitting but I found myself coming back to it many times afterwards many times!

Written during the 2020 Pandemic, Nikita Gill touches on themes of grief, trauma, hope, and renewal. She reminds us that many of the things we have felt over the past year have been felt by us all, and reminds us that with endings come new beginnings, and a chance for change.

I’ve been a fan of Nikita Gill’s work since I discovered her first book from Thought Catalog, so I was really excited for the opportunity to review this e-ARC thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Books. Instead of focusing on the five stages of grief, Nikita Gill focuses on the five stages of hope, bringing us on her journey. Hope is a living, breathing thing, though it may show itself to each of us in different forms, and she emphasizes that there is hope in rebuilding and renewal. I think this is a collection that would have been so helpful and comforting to read during the height of the pandemic - I saw many of the feelings I had over the past fourteen months reflected in her poems. 4/5 stars

I really like Nikita Gill's work. I was thrilled when the publisher approved my request for an arc of this collection. Unfortunately, like everything else in the last year, I struggled with this book. That's partly because my expectations were misplaced, I was expecting a collection that was more pandemic specific, really speaking on both the personal and global experiences of 2020. There certainly are a number of great poems like that within this collection, but there are a greater number that speak more generally of healing, loneliness, and self reflection. While there are varying themes, there were a couple of poems that felt repetitive - I don't know if that's perhaps a sign that the book maybe is a little too long, or if it's just slightly scattered and struggling with flow. That said, there are a good number of poems in here that are so moving I want to frame and hang them. There's some real gems in here, absolute beauty in both prose and sketch. The artwork is so significant and wonderful I rounded up from a 3.5 to a 4 on that basis alone. This won't be my favorite Nikita Gill collection, but it's still one I'm grateful to have read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Books for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.