This collection of poetry is so reminiscent of first love and first loss. It sets me deeply in my first true heartbreak with the person I thought was forever. I still wish them happy days and a happy life, but there is something to be said about unlearning a person you knew so well. The beauty in these poems is the emotion that rings true and clear and without cliche. Oftentimes rhyming can cheapen the meaning, but the way Sophie Diener has done it in Someone Somewhere Maybe is haunting.

This collection is great for those who love Rupi Kaur or relate to being a young woman. This book is filled with honesty and warmth. I would recommend young women read this and might even suggest to my future daughter if/when she loses her first true love.

I loved this so much. The characters were flawed and wonderful and I felt captivated by every page. I can't wait to read what's next from this author.

I really wanted to like this, I love poetry and this seemed like something right up my alley. But unfortunately, this really really was not for me. The poetry wasn't really in a format that I enjoy, and felt a lot more personal than I liked. The poetry was clearly a life reflection, which is fine but just didn't really work for me.

Thank you to Sophie Diener, St. Martin's Press, St. Martin's Griffin, and NetGalley for a free advanced reader copy of "Someone Somewhere Maybe" for an honest review.

"Things do not have to last forever to have been meant to be."

There's a glorious paralleling of an early, first, deep falling in love being mined and reflected on within this volume of poems. We see the glorious structure of falling in love, being in love, and then how that love fell apart, which on its own could have filled this whole chapbook and has filled dozens of the modern wave of confessional poetry books. What makes this volume stand out is that the first half of the story is that, and the second is the much later present-day voice & paired poems reflecting on that time.

There's such an importance weaving through, about how love (and the lessons we learn falling in love, being in love, falling out of love, having out hearts broken by love) is just as important at every step of its life, and in the far rearview mirror. That all those things can still be cherished for exactly what they were, how, and why, no matter what the ending of them might have been. This book felt far less like looking back on a painful time and mourning it, as celebrating that a great love had happened, a swelling of the deepest gratitude for it having graced the poet's life.

I'm definitely looking forward to more ot Diener's work in the future.

📖 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘳𝘦: modern 𝘱oetry
⭐️ 𝘙𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨: 3/5 ⭐️
🗓️ 𝘙𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦: 9/26/23

This book seemed a little cliche. I definitely think the target audience is more in the teen-mid twenties range.

Thank you to Sophie and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

"Things do not have to last forever to have been meant to be." This is one of those reads that you go into hoping for one or two things to be good, but then you are completely surprised by how raw and real everything is. This collection of poetry perfectly encapsulates the emotions surrounding being a human. It is vulnerable, it is simultaneously heavy and light but most importantly it is amazing.

5/5 🌟

Thank you to Sophie and NetGalley for this ARC 💕

I love poetry that makes me feel things I didn’t realize I had hid from myself. I saw myself and my mind reflected in Sophie Diener’s writing.

I can’t wait to see what she writes next. I know it will make me feel just as much if not more than Someone Somewhere Maybe did.

Honorable mentions to my favorite poems:
Eighteen
Feelings
Between The Lines
Seasons
Expectations
Highs and Lows
I Hope You’re Happy
Birthdays
Homebody
Idyllic


Ones that I want included in my wedding vows:
Patient Love
I Do Not Need You
Vows
Home
How Do You Know?

I would gift this to someone even if they didn’t typically read poetry. You will still connect to it.

Childlike but full of wisdom, Shel Silverstein meets a Taylor Swift album. Many I hear in my head as a song. Some are so earnest and almost saccharine sweet, but then the next makes my eyes well up. It's more in the style of a Rupi Kaur which isn't my preference and the stakes feel low, but this would be a lovely collection to buy for a teenager.

I first found Sophie on tiktok and I was SO excited when I saw her book on NetGalley. I love her poems and how real and relatable they are. The last poem is my absolute favorite and I can’t wait to hear/read more of what she writes in the future.

**Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC of this collection!**

While Sophie Diener is compared to Rupi Kaur and Amanda Lovelace I find her to be WAY closer to Amanda Lovelace but with a little more depth.

I'm not a tik-tokker so I hadn't heard of Diener before seeing this collection on NetGalley - I'm so glad I checked it out. This collection made me nostalgic for the way things felt when I was a teenager, but not even just the good parts. It almost made me miss heartbreak and feeling big emotions that felt like the end of the world but ended up just being Friday.

Being from a small town, a lot of these poems resonated with me in specific ways as well. Going home after years of being away and running into old high school friends, and the ebbs and flows of the neighborhood over time where everyone knows everyone.

Definitely check this one out if you like feeling big things from poems, and not just the happy stuff! Hit that preorder button to support a debut poetry collection!

This book is far outside of my preferred genre to read. I only picked this up because our blog was doing a prompt challenge and one of the prompts was, “A book outside of your normal genre”. So I saw this book and decided to try it out.

I thought the poems were well-written and I could tell that there was a lot of emotion behind them. My only problem was that I felt like this book was for a younger audience. So in reality, I shouldn’t have picked it up in the first place. The poems were about an angst teenage girl who got broken up with and how her life will never be the same. I really couldn’t handle some of the poems because they just wanted to make me cringe.

Despite all that, I still gave it 3 stars because I feel like 15 to 18-year-olds would really like this book. There wasn’t anything wrong with the poems, I just couldn’t relate to them and just felt like I wasn’t the intended audience.

A beautiful little collection of poems that feel like a warm hug, definitely a sweet book to keep tucked away for when you need a pick me up.

Thank you to the author Sophie Diener, publishers St. Martin's Press and SMPGInfluencers, and as always NetGalley, for an early access widget for this beautiful poetry collection, SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, MAYBE.

From On the Urge to Isolate p54

"The sky
will roar and scream and cry
and I
will not call her dramatic...."

I truly love contemporary minimalist poetry, but I can be pretty picky about it. I feel like every poet starts off trying to emulate Rupi Kaur, whom I adore, but whose style and tone I consider inimitable. What I love about this new collection from TikTok sensation Sophie Diener is that if she took any lesson at all from Rupi, it was to be vulnerable and reveal her own voice.

I found the poems somewhat repetitive at times, but at others, they ache with beauty. Here is a favorite:

Easy to Love p50

"I’m bending and breaking.
I’m easy to love.
I can’t look in the mirror.
I’m just what he wants.
I’m passing all his tests.
I love getting good grades.
I’m jumping through dog hoops.
I’m digging a deep grave.
I shrink beneath sweaters.
I shed all my skin.
I sink to the floorboards.
I’m rearranged by him.
My heart gets discarded.
She tugs on my sleeve.
Her eyes are accusing.
She asks, What about me?"

A wonderful collection for fans of contemporary minimalism or readers new to poetry in any form. This accessible collection should appeal to a great range of poetry lovers.

Rating: ✨️✨️✨️✨️.25 / 5
Recommend? Yes!
Finished: June 16 2023
Format: Advance Digital, NetGalley, SMPGI

I was sooooo excited for this book and I am so sad that I did not like it. I gave loved some of Sophie's poems on instagram and other social media. Unfortunately this book just did not hit for me. I could not emotionally connect to this collection and I am so disappointed.

What a sucker punch of an emotional little book. This collection focuses on relationships, the rise and fall of love, and the aftermath that comes from putting yourself out there to be loved by others. There is a freshness from this collection where you can tell the author, Sophie has been collecting these over the years and working on exploring her feelings through this art form.

While there were a variety of topics that she explored I felt a strong connection to those that were about mental health and her struggles with panic attacks. The ones I loved most were:
1. Save me
2. I Hope Today is Kind to You
3. Seasons
4. Panic Attacks
5. You Are Safe

These were some of her most raw and emotionally charged poems in the collection, you can feel her pain and the growth that she was experiencing during this time of her life. I hope to keep these poems in my collection for years to come so I can come back to them time and time again and take from them when life gets hard.

Final Thoughts: I would recommend this collection to anyone who is wanting to experience a multitude of emotions in a tiny package. It was a wonderful read that kept me entertained!

TW: panic attacks, heartbreak

Disclaimer:
Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press, St. Martin's Griffin for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This book is perfect for fans of Taylor Swift, romcom films, and sad rainy days. Sophie Diener perfectly describes the hopelessness of heartbreak in a lyrical, melancholic way. All of the poems fit together so well and create an intimate roadmap of vulnerable feelings. The way that Diener describes abusive relationships and manipulative partners made me feel so seen and validated. This book hit straight to my core and tempered my heart.

Some lines that stayed with me long after reading:

- "I promise you it's okay. No one is mad at you."
- "And I keep reading your favorite book-the one I swore I would not like-and when I finally close its cover, it's all filled with underlines."
- "You are not behind...There's no line to cross by twenty-three or thirty..."
- "You meet me at bookstores. You make me black tea. I wear your best sweaters. Nobody wants flings in September, October, November."
- "It takes me one whole year and six months to realize that I am not the protagonist."
- "I'm passing all his tests. I love getting good grades."
- "There are ghosts that like to hang around the house."

Beautifully written…vivid imagery…raw & real

Young love, sadness, heartbreak, loss, loneliness, hope, peace, acceptance, self-growth

Having never been in a relationship, this book evoked sadness…my heart ached at a few scenes. Some of the poems, such as the ones that center around the feelings of anxiety, I was able to relate more to while others in the book, not as much.

Thank you to St Martin’s Press and Netgalley for giving me an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
I had not heard Sophie Diener before opening this book, but I am definitely a fan now!
The way she weaves poems about mental health, self-concept, heartbreak, loss, and grief is lyrical—beautiful. This is a quick read that resonates with you if you’ve ever felt alone, not enough, anxious, or getting out of a relationship.
Definitely a great read for poetry lovers!

This book of poems is very good, but probably not geared toward a middle-aged married woman. I feel the author’s angst and appreciate her words.

This was very real. This collection shows love, misery, self loathing, and self love throughout several years. Some of these poems were VERY relatable.