I enjoyed this for what it was, a macabre collection of poems by women in horror.

A lot of the poems went over my head and quite a few just weren’t my preferred style. However I did enjoy this collection overall and I think reading it during spooky season was perfect timing.

I really enjoyed this collection! It was my first time delving into dark poetry, and I will definitely be trying more after this one. The imagery that the words evoked caused me to feel uncomfortable at times because of how vivid it was. I love it when the words give me such a defined mental picture of what is being expressed. At times the symbolism went over my head, but I blame that on being in the last few weeks of writing my dissertation so my brain isn't working at full capacity. All in all, would recommend this to someone who wants to try some darker poetry, or someone that enjoys reading horror fiction.

After renewing my love for books, I must say I’m rather rusty with poetry, and this book was a nice and approachable re-introduction into the genre.

Under Her Skin is a collection of horror poems written by cis/trans women, non-binary, and femme people. The oppressiveness of the patriarchy, self-image, loss, and pregnancy are some of the commentary covered over the range of poems contained in this book.

While not every poem personally compelled me, I think the vast representation and stylization contained in this collection makes this a difficult task.

I think that organizing these poems in a more thoughtful way, perhaps by an overarching idea may have been more beneficial. I also wish the artwork within the book occurred more, because I loved seeing particular poems be brought to life by the same artist.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC copy so that I could provide my thoughts before this book is released

This is just not for me - I love horror but I'm not the biggest poetry fan and I guess horror poetry isn't my thing. I tried giving this collection a chance but I realized that I wasn't enjoying it and I don't feel like it was doing anything for me. However, I'm sure it will find it's audience. I'm giving this 2 stars because some of the poems were pretty interesting but nothing in particular stood out to me.

The poetry in this volume is amazing but not exactly as advertised by the description. I went into this collection expecting horror/spooky poetry told through a women's lens but instead encountered the average topics of dangerous beauty standards and duplicitous gender norms. While the content itself is easily worth a 5-star rating, the collection itself failed self-imposed expectations.

I didn't hate this, but there were a few poems that weren't exactly horror except for some "dark" descriptors. There were a a lot of them I did like, and that really stood out to me but really I've read better poetry this year and this was just not what I expected from the description.

It's not was "horror" as the description suggests but I did enjoy myself!

Thank you to NetGalley for letting me read this in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a beautiful collection that includes all women. So grateful to Net Galley for providing a copy. Beautiful prose through out, even if you are not currently a poetry fan I think this would appeal to a wide audience. Also, the cover is to die for.

In a post me-too world, I'm thinking of my femaleness differently to the way I was 5 years ago. I feel hopeful, stronger. This collection of poetry builds on that strength.

Some of these poems made me cry, some gave me power, some were just damn entertaining. There is some darkness, but through that I drew hopefulness.

What a joy it is to partake in art. And these poems are pure art. They stir up emotion, remind us of beauty and pain. What more does one require from art?

I'll definitely be returning to some of my favorites in the collection and am feeling so excited and positive about the future for female poetry.

Recommend.

I was very excited for this one because I love the horror genre and am trying to find my niche in poetry.

Unfortunately, this was wasn't really for me. I did not enjoy the majority of these, as they felt a little flat. There were some stand-outs that I did really enjoy. However, I don't feel that I can give a collection a very high rating if I didn't enjoy most of the works.

This isn't something that I would call scary, perhaps unnerving is a slightly better descriptor? Most of the poems were gory, or had features of body horror. Some of works felt as though the author was going for shock value rather than fluidity. But, as I stated earlier, poetry is something I am just getting into.

Overall, even though this wasn't for me, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to someone who enjoys poetry or horror anthologies.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC!

I have been desperate to read more poetry in a broader variety of genres so when I saw this collection of horror poerty, I couldn't resist, especially since they were wriiten by women and focussed on women in general. I'm not a poerty expert but I don't necessarily think you need to be super into poetry to enjoy a collection like this. Almost every poem in this collection made me feel something and I think that's what's important. Whether it was disgust, distress, sadness, or anything else, each poem evoked some kind of emotional response from me. Having such a wide range of writers from different backgrounds really worked for me as it allowed for so many topics to be discussed and written about. From pregnancy, abortion, fertility, relationships, self worth, self image, there's something in her for everyone to relate to.

I really love the idea of this collection as a way to showcase women in horror writing and also to express the frustrations and themes of womanhood in a more gruesome, horrifying, and memorable way.

I think the collection is organised really well and each poem flowed well into the next. Nothing felt out of place, which I suspect can be quite difficult to do when working with such a broad collection of poets. The cover, of course, is stunning and realy represents what this collection is about.

Some of my favourite poems include;
'Untouched' by Marilyn Fabiola
'Words Unspoken' by Mary Rajotte
'To Bloom in Blood' by Sara Tantlinger
'These Men are all One Monster' by Cassondra Windwalker
'When Witches Come Out of Us' by Donna Lynch

I do think the first half of the book was stronger than the second half, however I did enjoy the majority of the poems. Often I found that the poems were covering the same ideas and themes using the same words and phrases which left parts of the book feeling repetitive.

Overall I really enjoyed this collection and would highly recommend it to anyone despite of their level of poetry knowledge.

I thought I knew what to expect with this book. I didn't. Poetry is still new to me and so far it's been a blast. I don't think this will be for everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed this.

I don't read a lot of poetry so I didn't really know what to expect with this book. But I was so surprised by how much I liked it. I also wasn't expecting how literal the title was with the poems, there were definitely a few that creeped me out and that I didn't enjoy as much as the rest of them. but overall I think that if you love poetry especially poems by women you will love this book.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher/author for providing me with an e-copy in exchange for my honest review.

When I requested this I was just intrigued by the concept of it and I use to love writing poetry. If you love poetry and dark concepts, I would recommend this. I started reading this as soon as it was given to me on Netgalley and I loved it. There were some of the poems that were not my favorite but overall the entire book was very good.

I enjoyed it. Its a solid 3 stars for me.

This was a dark, imaginative and engaging poetry collection, with a huge range of writers and themes explored. I'm pushing myself to try more poetry, and this collection really delivered! There are over 80 poems in total, so of course some stand out to me personally more than others, appealing to my personal tastes, and some poems really missing the mark for me, but that's the beauty of such a large collection; I get to discover many new poets/authors all within the horror genre. Some of these were particularly dark and descriptive, so I might be reluctant to recommend this to just anyone, but that's to be expected with horror! Plus, the foreward and introduction from the editors clearly established the themes and aims of the collection. Overall I think this was a well put together collection that I want to own physically when it comes out next April!

Some of my favourites included:
'It Hurts When I Breathe' by Mercedes M Yardley,
'Harm' by Emily Ruth Verona,
'These Men Are All One Monster' by Cassondra Windwalker
'Outside In' by Dalena Storm
'When You' by Miriam H Harrison
'My Body, My Book' by Carina Bissett
'Queen' by Alyson Faye
'Better By Now' by N J Ember

I was intrigued to read this collection of horror poems about women, but I didn't like it. I like the symbolism behind them, but I couldn't find one and say "I really like it". I felt like there was something missing about each poem and most of the time I felt like something was off about them.
This doesn't mean other readers won't like this collection, but personally I didn't find it that great.

I think my expectations were a bit too high going into this poetry collection. Knowing what it intended to do, I expected to be blown away, horrified, perhaps disgusted, and that this content would provoke a lot of introspective thought on my part as a female reader. I anticipated something like the emotions I went through reading the short stories in "Her Body and Other Parties" by Carmen Maria Machado—visceral dread, trauma release and unease, heightened by the fact that the horror in those stories comes in large part from how they relate to existing in a female body. As it turned out, I counted only a handful of poems in "Under Her Skin" as having any such impact on me whatsoever, which is, in the end, a disappointment to me. Again: my expectations were perhaps a bit too high.

However, poetry and how it affects you is very subjective, and it is important to keep your biases in mind reading a collection such as this. Especially when it comes to poetry which springs from diverse voices where the poets' lived experiences may differ wildly from your own. For example, many of the poems had themes of pregnancy, womanhood as it pertains to fertility, and motherhood—themes which I just do not relate to at all. They are an important part of many people's lives, though, and I recognize that those works just weren't written for me—and that is okay! They might be perfect and feel very resonant to another reader.

Beyond that, though, other poems I regretfully had issues with because they were just too vague for me. I love symbolism, but it needs to be rooted in some sort of clear intent, and here, at times I struggled to understand what the writer was trying to convey, as though the direction was somehow "off".
Others felt too shallow to me; I wanted the poems to cut deeper into the themes they centered around, because there is so much potential in the concept of cis and trans women and non-binary folks expressing their own personal horror, but I felt like a great number of the poems didn't deliver on their promise. At times, they felt repetitive.
Some of the ones I enjoyed the least read to me like the writer had formulated their phrases from a list of words that they thought sounded cool or beautiful, and those poems ended up saying nothing but "look at these pretty words" to me, which left me feeling empty.

Now a superficial note: the cover art is absolutely gorgeous, but the small drawings inside felt a bit... rushed? They could have benefited from more work. And there could have been more drawings, for that matter—they seemed kind of unevenly scattered throughout the collection, and that made them feel a bit like they were just thrown in there at the last second. This is just my opinion, but I felt like the drawings would have worked better and felt more organic to the content if they had had a more purposeful placement; perhaps if the poems came in some kind of thematic order, and the drawings separated the different themes like subtle chapter markers. I don't know. Just... as they were, I might as well have done without them.

In essence, I think mileage will probably vary with this collection. It might well be a five star read to you, and that will depend on what experiences, biases and preferences in writing that you bring to your reading experience. I would say to anyone curious, give it a chance—you might love it. For me, though, while I am sad to give it two stars as I truly respect the intention of what it was going for, in the end it just didn't give me what I wanted from it.

In the debut poetry showcase from Black Spot Books, this collection showcases a diverse cast of women from all backgrounds; cis, trans, non-binary, and brings them together to create something unique and compelling.

Using horror and haunting imagery to convey the real-life fears of women all over the world - getting truly under the skin of the unspoken horrors and ripping into some darkly uncomfortable subjects. From sexual liberation, violence, bodily autonomy, fertility, self-harm and body image, underneath the eerie metaphors there is something that every woman will be able to connect with on a deeper level.

Rather than obvious monsters, most of the poems in this collection are a subtle horror - the chill in your spine, the fear that something is lurking, an unrest deep in your bones which stays in your mind long after you've turned the page. With a range of styles and prose, from classic to contemporary, from winding and story-like to short and concise - you may not like every style but you're sure to find something to connect with.

Evocative, darkly alluring and able to reach in and touch the hearts of its readers, I can't wait for the next collection.

I can not express enough about the plot. The plot is so interesting that you will find yourself gasping everytime you find something new. Thank you so much netgalley providing an arc!
I really like the worldbuilding, and how the author can create a world that has the capability of making us vicariously live through it. I feel like the introduction was a bit too slow-paced for me. The characters are fairly interesting.
Henceforth, it was quite a good read.

Under Her Skin is a poetry collection written by cis, trans and enby femme authors bringing to light, women, using body horror to expose the way society and life has shaped the way women live, feel, love and die. A beautiful collection of harrowing narrations that left me breathless each time, each one a reminder that there is a power inside every women not afraid to come out under any injustice. I felt some were repetitive due to the main theme picked out among contenders, but nonetheless important, true, and brutal.

This was a great, jaw-dropping, important collection that belongs in the hands of those old enough to read it and understand the grief, power and beauty of the human soul with or without duress. Absolutely breathtaking.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I’m glad I requested Under Her Skin. The poems within these pages are not always horror, but we all know that horror can take on many different forms, especially for women. It’s also quite beautiful to see the diversity in these writers. I think representation is insanely vital for many reasons, so it’s nice to see these doors open for more women. Let’s not forget about the awesome cover art, too! Holy wow, is it ever beautiful!

There were only a few poems that missed the mark for me, but that just means they are probably going to be perfect for someone else.