An expansive, uneven collection of romantic sentiments organized around the motif of seasons.
A collection of poems and artworks offers odes to love and its related feelings.
What are the four seasons of the soul? According to Kaur, they are different from those of the calendar year, though no less varied or intense in their weather and flora. This book dedicates a section to each. “The Season of Longing” is full of poems about loneliness, confusion, yearning, and fantasizing. “Oh this seductive / beauty / of self pity, / i want to wear / it so elegantly / on my skin,” writes the self-aware romantic speaker of one poem. “The Season of Remembrance” is a time of memory, indecision, recognition, and mystery: “Where will i go without you my love? / my heart has mysteriously chosen / to follow the fragrance of your soul.” “The Season of Love” is one of passion, joy, lust, and agony: the highest highs and the lowest lows. “He has called me / to dissolve in / this oneness,” the author writes in one poem. “Oh such beautiful / is this union. / i have myself / turned into love.” The abbreviated “Season of Enlightenment” is reflective, finding lessons in the pain of past mistakes while growing stronger for future seasons. “In every moment i am only returning to myself,” begins one short poem. “The autumn leaf is returning to the spring.” The poems are generally short, never titled, and sometimes presented with as many as three or four per page. As a result, they tend to flow in and out of one another, giving readers the sense of an ongoing (if fragmentary) soliloquy on the part of one woman in love. There are some sharp lyrics here, particularly among the shorter pieces. Still, Kaur takes a kitchen sink approach. Every other page is a piece of art, most frequently an altered photograph of leaves or flower petals with words written on them. These feel quite disposable, and make the poetry feel rather disposable by association. Some of the words drawn on Johnny’s images, oddly, are just the titles or choruses of songs: “Can’t help falling in love with you” (Elvis Presley); “This must be love” (Phil Collins); “Truly madly deeply” (Savage Garden). Fans of intense, if sentimental, love poetry will find occasional diamonds here. But they will have to pick them out of the rough.
An expansive, uneven collection of romantic sentiments organized around the motif of seasons.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-69696-045-8
Page Count: 237
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Haphazard and undemanding.
A sports agent’s first official client is the man she dumped years ago in college.
After two years of hard work as an underling, Nora Mackenzie is finally being promoted to full-time sports agent. She’s worked hard, kept quiet, and allowed men in the office to call her Mac—a nickname she hates—all to show she’s a team player and “one of the guys.” Unfortunately, her boss instructs her to sign Derek Pender, a football player coming off an injury, who happens to be the man she heartlessly dumped in their senior year of college. Derek signs with her for revenge, seeing it as his opportunity to pay Nora back for callously breaking his heart eight years earlier. He insists she be at his beck and call: answering his emails, running his errands, cooking dinner for his dates. He also refuses to let her explain why she broke up with him without warning or explanation. Nora feels she has no choice but to acquiesce to Derek’s humiliating demands, since she’s worked too hard to let him ruin her dream job. She hopes he’ll thaw and they might become friends, but Derek’s bad behavior is designed to hide the fact that he’s still in love with her. Nora’s characterization is uneven, veering between anger at how she’s treated in the male-dominated field to immature bickering and bantering with Derek. Although Adams likely meant for Derek and Nora’s interactions to have an enemies-to-lovers vibe, the characters instead seem juvenile and stuck in the past. The novel is fueled by a string of tropes—second chance romance! married in Vegas! only one bed!—each randomly deployed to keep the book going despite thin characterization and wan plotting.
Haphazard and undemanding.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593723678
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.
A vampire and an Alpha werewolf enter into a marriage of convenience in order to ease tensions between their species.
As the only daughter of a prominent Vampyre councilman, Misery Lark has grown accustomed to playing the role that’s demanded of her—and now, her father is ordering her to be part of yet another truce agreement. In an effort to maintain goodwill between the Vampyres and their longtime nemeses the Weres, Misery must wed their Alpha, Lowe Moreland. But it turns out that Misery has her own motivations for agreeing to this political marriage, including finding answers about what happened to her best friend, who went missing after setting up a meeting in Were territory. Isolated from her kind and surrounded on all sides by the enemy after the wedding, Misery refuses to let herself forget about her real mission. It doesn’t matter that Lowe is one of the most confounding and intense people she’s ever met, or that the connection building between them doesn’t feel like one born entirely of convenience. There’s also the possibility that Lowe may already have a Were mate of his own, but in spite of their biological differences, they may turn out to be the missing piece in each other’s lives. While this is Hazelwood’s first paranormal romance, and the book does lean on some hallmark tropes of the genre, the contemporary setting lends itself to the author’s trademark humor and makes the political plot more easily digestible. Misery and Lowe’s slow-burn romance is appealing enough that readers will readily devour every moment between them and hunger to return to them whenever the story diverts from their scenes together.
Sink your teeth into this delightful paranormal romance with a modern twist.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593550403
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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