What do you think?
Rate this book
All The Things I Never Said
All The Things I Never Said is a collection of poetry and journal-like entries. Throughout the pages you will experience heartbreak, happiness, sadness, and be reminded of what it was like to be a teenager.
75 pages, Paperback
First published November 26, 2013
1017 people are currently reading
8715 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 284 reviews
February 27, 2017
There's a problem with honest poems but not poetic at all. There's a problem with honest poems but somehow offensive.
That's what I think of this book.
Actually I was intrigued to read this. Other than because this book is pretty much thin, I was surprised that it's written by someone 2 years younger than me. Youth has so much potential within them, especially when it comes to creative writing. Just like what I've stated before on my review of The Dogs I Have Kissed, I want to know youth's perspectives over serious cases such as mental illnesses and social problems.
Sure this book does talk about topic like the danger of self-harm, but it turns out to be slightly offensive.
"Suicidal and Cancerous
All the suicidal kids
with all their cuts and pills
no matter how hard they try
they just can’t get it right
because they were born to live
All the cancerous kids
with all their smiles and tears
no matter how hard they try
they just can’t get it right
because they were born
to die"
We cannot compare someone who wants to die with someone who physically sick. Truth is, everyone is born to die, the difference is on the process. The say that cancerous people is only going to die physically sickens me as if they cannot be cured, as if their lives are only consist of suffering and chemo, as if they don't deserve to have a life at all. Not so motivating, undoubtedly. Anyways, you all get what I mean.
And there's this poem that is about anorexic, I suppose:
"Beauty
Did you ever wonder why
in animals
hip bones
collar bones
and
rib cages
being visible
are thought of as
sickly
ugly
and sometimes even abusive
yet, in humans
that is what we call
beautiful"
This is a..well, good? example of metaphorical sarcasm.
There's this another example that I sort of like:
"Shoot
What is more powerful
a thought, or a gun?
a gun gives the opportunity
but a thought
pulls the trigger"
But why this feels so familiar? Tumblr much?
And this.
"Poisoned
You were addicted to her
like alcohol
every single day
you drank her up.
She was in
your veins
flowed through like blood.
Then you decided
to go sober."
And there's this weird one.
"Untitled 6 (for you)
I miss
how you would get upset when I smoked
and how you would take my cigarette
and tell me that
my lungs and
my voice
were both too beautiful
to be ruined
and I miss
how after that
you would take the cigarette
to your mouth
and smoke it yourself
I miss the day
when you gave me a bottle of vodka
instead of
a bouquet of flowers
to ask me to some
stupid party
and I miss how
I could wake up
with you next to me
and not have to worry
if tomorrow
I would wake up alone
or by your side
truth is
as much as I
tell myself
that it's the memories I miss
it's actually you.
I want you
next to me
again"
Taken away the cigarette but offering a vodka? OKAAAAAAYYYYY.
Overall, most of the poems on this book are more like quotation when someone suddenly speaks wisely. It's the enter that makes them seem way longer and poetic but frankly...not really. So I need to warn you again that poetry is not about which word you have to hit enter afterward and write the next phrase below the previous phrase. BUT IT'S NOT ABOUT THAT for duck's sake if a poetry is really about all of that, believe me I would have written 12928298000 books. No bullshit.
That's what I think of this book.
Actually I was intrigued to read this. Other than because this book is pretty much thin, I was surprised that it's written by someone 2 years younger than me. Youth has so much potential within them, especially when it comes to creative writing. Just like what I've stated before on my review of The Dogs I Have Kissed, I want to know youth's perspectives over serious cases such as mental illnesses and social problems.
Sure this book does talk about topic like the danger of self-harm, but it turns out to be slightly offensive.
"Suicidal and Cancerous
All the suicidal kids
with all their cuts and pills
no matter how hard they try
they just can’t get it right
because they were born to live
All the cancerous kids
with all their smiles and tears
no matter how hard they try
they just can’t get it right
because they were born
to die"
We cannot compare someone who wants to die with someone who physically sick. Truth is, everyone is born to die, the difference is on the process. The say that cancerous people is only going to die physically sickens me as if they cannot be cured, as if their lives are only consist of suffering and chemo, as if they don't deserve to have a life at all. Not so motivating, undoubtedly. Anyways, you all get what I mean.
And there's this poem that is about anorexic, I suppose:
"Beauty
Did you ever wonder why
in animals
hip bones
collar bones
and
rib cages
being visible
are thought of as
sickly
ugly
and sometimes even abusive
yet, in humans
that is what we call
beautiful"
This is a..well, good? example of metaphorical sarcasm.
There's this another example that I sort of like:
"Shoot
What is more powerful
a thought, or a gun?
a gun gives the opportunity
but a thought
pulls the trigger"
But why this feels so familiar? Tumblr much?
And this.
"Poisoned
You were addicted to her
like alcohol
every single day
you drank her up.
She was in
your veins
flowed through like blood.
Then you decided
to go sober."
And there's this weird one.
"Untitled 6 (for you)
I miss
how you would get upset when I smoked
and how you would take my cigarette
and tell me that
my lungs and
my voice
were both too beautiful
to be ruined
and I miss
how after that
you would take the cigarette
to your mouth
and smoke it yourself
I miss the day
when you gave me a bottle of vodka
instead of
a bouquet of flowers
to ask me to some
stupid party
and I miss how
I could wake up
with you next to me
and not have to worry
if tomorrow
I would wake up alone
or by your side
truth is
as much as I
tell myself
that it's the memories I miss
it's actually you.
I want you
next to me
again"
Taken away the cigarette but offering a vodka? OKAAAAAAYYYYY.
Overall, most of the poems on this book are more like quotation when someone suddenly speaks wisely. It's the enter that makes them seem way longer and poetic but frankly...not really. So I need to warn you again that poetry is not about which word you have to hit enter afterward and write the next phrase below the previous phrase. BUT IT'S NOT ABOUT THAT for duck's sake if a poetry is really about all of that, believe me I would have written 12928298000 books. No bullshit.
July 1, 2016
I recognized a lot of quotes I’ve seen on tumblr or another social media. It’s weird thinking a 14-year-old wrote this. There are some things in here I can’t imagine a little girl doing.
All in all, it was very cliché-y and repetitive.
All in all, it was very cliché-y and repetitive.
November 29, 2019
A lot of these things that the author never said will coincide with anyone's life in general.
A good attempt by a 14-year old.
A good attempt by a 14-year old.
January 17, 2020
So the author of this collection is 14 and honestly, I do love supporting young and upcoming authors. All The Things I Never Said is a poetry collection of heartbreak and coming of age. It was an OK read, but most of the writing came across a little too repetitive.
February 10, 2018
It's sort of weird to know beforehand that what you're going to read was written by a fourteen yo, because then you don't get high hopes.. But then again, in all honesty? This was not a collection of poems, more like a bunch of heartbroken facebook status written on a chappy background in the most horrible font.
I'm sorry, but it just doesn't suit my taste.
I'm sorry, but it just doesn't suit my taste.
August 11, 2020
Well, I don’t know what this was, but luckily this bundle was incredibly short, so I only spent an hour reading this.
First off, the author was 14 years old when she wrote this. Wow, right? I was interested.
I liked the introduction, it was definitely not bad. I was okay with the first few poems. They’re nothing special, but they weren’t bad. Then, as I continued, things started to get very repetitive. The title of this bundle could easiliy have been changed to ‘Thinking of You’, because I honestly couldn’t keep up with the amount of times that that was the general stretch of a poem.
There were a few pieces I actually liked, e.g. ‘Shoot’ and ‘Childhood Sayings’. Mae Krell definitely has potential. Truly. But though I find a main theme and consistency as to the content of poems in a bundle important, that doesn’t mean I want to read the same thing paraphrased thirty times. And I also want a consistency in the punctuation style. If you keep the capital letters at the beginning of the sentence, that’s fine by me. Don’t drop them elsewhere. Use periods, or don’t use them. Make a choice. Edit your work. Is this too much to ask?
And then there’s the problematic issue of a few of these poems as regards their actual content... There are many 14-year-olds who do crazy stuff, but having had a boyfriend who smokes, gifts you vodka and treats you like dirt while you’re still crying over him and can’t stop thinking about him? Hm.
Be it independently, I can’t for the life of me comprehend how this got published. If I should summarise it, I would say this is the product of 1) being a 14-year-old girl, 2) browsing on Tumblr for hours on end, 3) having had some type of break-up, and 4) dramatising and fantasising.
First off, the author was 14 years old when she wrote this. Wow, right? I was interested.
I liked the introduction, it was definitely not bad. I was okay with the first few poems. They’re nothing special, but they weren’t bad. Then, as I continued, things started to get very repetitive. The title of this bundle could easiliy have been changed to ‘Thinking of You’, because I honestly couldn’t keep up with the amount of times that that was the general stretch of a poem.
There were a few pieces I actually liked, e.g. ‘Shoot’ and ‘Childhood Sayings’. Mae Krell definitely has potential. Truly. But though I find a main theme and consistency as to the content of poems in a bundle important, that doesn’t mean I want to read the same thing paraphrased thirty times. And I also want a consistency in the punctuation style. If you keep the capital letters at the beginning of the sentence, that’s fine by me. Don’t drop them elsewhere. Use periods, or don’t use them. Make a choice. Edit your work. Is this too much to ask?
And then there’s the problematic issue of a few of these poems as regards their actual content... There are many 14-year-olds who do crazy stuff, but having had a boyfriend who smokes, gifts you vodka and treats you like dirt while you’re still crying over him and can’t stop thinking about him? Hm.
Be it independently, I can’t for the life of me comprehend how this got published. If I should summarise it, I would say this is the product of 1) being a 14-year-old girl, 2) browsing on Tumblr for hours on end, 3) having had some type of break-up, and 4) dramatising and fantasising.
June 27, 2019
For a fourteen-year-old's book, this was actually quite good, and it was the type of freestyle poetry that I enjoy. There were definitely some really great analogies, but others read a little like tumblr posts.
March 23, 2017
This is what you'll read if you search "heartbreak quotes" on tumblr.
March 3, 2015
I honestly did not find this book at all poetic or creative. It made me happy to see that the author was 14, and that she had already published a book, but the more I read, the more doubts I had. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all 14 year olds are immature writers, but most of these poems reeked of teenage desperation for sadness. Krell writes about her experience with self harm, and it honestly gave me second hand embarrassment. All I could think was that her family and friends were going to read this book, and why would you want to expose that phase of your life to people who you may not be the closest to? Also, I felt as if the author was attempting to write more mature then she was. She takes her teenage "heart break" as the end of the world, and talks about cigarettes and alcohol way more than a young girl should have experience with. In addition, the poems were not even well written. There were a few good ones, but most of them were phrases separated by a paragraph. Krell also uses quotes from movies or quotes that I have personally seen on social media sites. The un-orginality of the topics and the try hard attempt of the poetry made this book a hard one to finish, but I still wish Krell the best of luck as she grows as a writer and hope to read some of her later works.
May 22, 2018
“Shoot What is more powerful a thought, or a gun? a gun gives the opportunity but a thought pulls the trigger”
This year I promised myself that I would try out different genres. Including poetry. By now I’ve read quite a few poetry books but rarely have I found one that actually blows me away. And sadly, this one wasn’t one of them. I am aware that these might have been relatable to some people but I wasn’t one of them.
|| Blog || Instagram ||
November 16, 2017
nope! a big nope from me! Don't read this if you’re struggling with anything! There are a lot of offensive "poems" in here about different things, like anorexia, self harm, substance abuse, etc... not in an awareness way but in a very very triggering way. A lot of them just felt like I was scrolling through tumblr tbh! They were all such downers, most of them were her basically saying she's nothing without a boy! And that she'll never be or do anything bc she lost the boy! A lot of them just pissed me off, like her comparing suicide to cancer. Just don't pick up this collection it's offensive!
March 17, 2017
I liked few of the poems a lot. Unfortunately, that couldn't cover up for the entirety.
Here's my favourite one;
“Suicidal and Cancerous
All the suicidal kids
with all their cuts and pills
no matter how hard they try
they just can’t get it right
because they were born to live
All the cancerous kids
with all their smiles and tears
no matter how hard they try
they just can’t get it right
because they were born
to die”
Here's my favourite one;
“Suicidal and Cancerous
All the suicidal kids
with all their cuts and pills
no matter how hard they try
they just can’t get it right
because they were born to live
All the cancerous kids
with all their smiles and tears
no matter how hard they try
they just can’t get it right
because they were born
to die”
August 5, 2018
First of all I want to say that I like this style of poetry. So it’s a shame that the poems themselves just weren’t as good as I hoped.
I would have liked more metaphors or clever descriptions because some things did feel like a quote you’d see on social media rather than a poem. I do appreciate that it didn’t take that long prose route though that some poets do because that doesn’t feel like poetry to me, so the style was good.
My main problem with this collection is that a few of the poems came off quite offensive. In “Suicidal and Cancerous” the author is basically comparing people who don’t want to live and have a mental illness to physically ill cancer patients that do want to live but can’t, and I just don’t understand why the author chose to compare the two. How does that offer any sort of conversation? It’s not some silly ironic thing it’s serious. Also in “Beauty” it talks about anorexia comparing humans who are so skinny you can see their ribs to animals and that people find it outrageous with animals but not humans. That’s completely not the case I think it’s more the fact that animals don’t choose to not feed themselves that’s why it seems so outrageous in that case but again I still don’t get why the author was comparing the two. Then finally in “Shoot” the author talks about guns hinting that it’s not guns that kill people but the person who thinks to pull the trigger and yes to a certain degree it has to be down to the person pulling the trigger being responsible, but to me if they didn’t have a gun in the first place would they have hurt anyone then? It’s another side to the topic the author didn’t bother to discuss.
I started to realise that these poems were pushing these boundaries that shouldn’t be pushed and only going into it from one angle so it came off offensive in the end. It just ruined it for me.
I would have liked more metaphors or clever descriptions because some things did feel like a quote you’d see on social media rather than a poem. I do appreciate that it didn’t take that long prose route though that some poets do because that doesn’t feel like poetry to me, so the style was good.
My main problem with this collection is that a few of the poems came off quite offensive. In “Suicidal and Cancerous” the author is basically comparing people who don’t want to live and have a mental illness to physically ill cancer patients that do want to live but can’t, and I just don’t understand why the author chose to compare the two. How does that offer any sort of conversation? It’s not some silly ironic thing it’s serious. Also in “Beauty” it talks about anorexia comparing humans who are so skinny you can see their ribs to animals and that people find it outrageous with animals but not humans. That’s completely not the case I think it’s more the fact that animals don’t choose to not feed themselves that’s why it seems so outrageous in that case but again I still don’t get why the author was comparing the two. Then finally in “Shoot” the author talks about guns hinting that it’s not guns that kill people but the person who thinks to pull the trigger and yes to a certain degree it has to be down to the person pulling the trigger being responsible, but to me if they didn’t have a gun in the first place would they have hurt anyone then? It’s another side to the topic the author didn’t bother to discuss.
I started to realise that these poems were pushing these boundaries that shouldn’t be pushed and only going into it from one angle so it came off offensive in the end. It just ruined it for me.
July 1, 2017
Clichés. Tumblr. Just not very good. A few poems did stand out, but overall it was just not the best.
December 24, 2017
Familiar
This collection of poetry feels homey and very much reminds me of things I write about and how I feel :) I love this. Definitely recommend.
Xo,
Rach
This collection of poetry feels homey and very much reminds me of things I write about and how I feel :) I love this. Definitely recommend.
Xo,
Rach
February 9, 2019
Writing Style - 3/5
Cover - 3/5
Overall Rating - 3 / 5
Cover - 3/5
Overall Rating - 3 / 5
December 10, 2018
She was 14 when she published this?? Damn
January 2, 2025
Depression but make them tumblr asthetic
November 28, 2019
"Because for me, without you there is no forever."
"We all go mad sometimes and that small break into insanity is actually what keeps us sane."
"Everything is nothing until you have someone to show it to and share it with."
"We all go mad sometimes and that small break into insanity is actually what keeps us sane."
"Everything is nothing until you have someone to show it to and share it with."
July 2, 2017
You're telling me a 14-year-old girl knows how the lips of her boyfriend in the morning taste like? Nonsense. Plain, tumblr-ish, repetitive - all of her 'poems'.
October 26, 2025
I enjoyed a few of these but I fear I’m still not into this « poetry » of y’all.
October 30, 2022
"Half of the time I don’t know what i’m writing about half of the time words spill out of me like a cluster of nothing [...] For some reason my mind cannot find anything that is worth writing about"
Trust me I can tell.
Trust me I can tell.
August 24, 2017
I did not have a problem with this book like some people did. Yes, I can't imagine a 14 year old doing some of the stuff in these poems like smoking cigarettes or waking up next to somebody. I see a lot of comments and reviews on here saying that she took quotes from Tumblr, or it's like "scrolling through the emo quotes on Tumblr or Pinterest". I don't have a problem with that. As long as she is not copying word from word, I don't see the harm in someone drawing inspiration from other poems or quotes. I know I do. I applaud this 14 year old for pursuing her dreams and I wish her luck as she grows older and hopefully, publishes more.
August 3, 2019
The poetry isn't bad, it's just way adult for a 14 year old. Drugs, eating disorder, self harm. Also I recognized at least one of these poems from Tumblr. I had it saved on my computer in High School
April 22, 2020
Though i liked the topics this poetry collection tackled, i found it to be kind of repetitive and a bit unoriginal. The imagery used to convey certain feelings was kind of basic (pretty much flowers, cigarettes or stars). Also many phrases were lifted from other authors' works ("i go to seek the great perhaps", from Looking for Alaska // "If you're a bird, i'm a bird", from The Notebook // "We all go mad sometimes", paraphrasing a line from Alice's adventures in Wonderland) and while i don't think it's bad to take inspiration from other books and works of fiction, i don't like to recognize the quotes in the middle of a poem because it breaks my concentration and interrupts the fluidity of the writting. Ultimately, though the topics explored intrigued me, i prefer other writtings.
March 2, 2017
So all told this only took me about ten minutes to read. For being written by a 14 year old girl, her insights are clever and her prose is dignified. Unfortunately I felt like there was a lot of repetitiveness, and some of the content just felt too... old for the author and the mindset in which it was presented.
Great for a debut, if she continues honing her craft she has some genuine talent as a writer. I'd love to see more and where she goes.
Great for a debut, if she continues honing her craft she has some genuine talent as a writer. I'd love to see more and where she goes.
October 30, 2016
I love how this collection is so short snd sweet yet to the point. I love that it has typos and it's raw and most of all that it's honest. I feel like Mae Krell isn't putting on airs with her work or trying to be anything she isn't. This book is just poetry from a teen about lost love and trying to find your place in the world. It's amazing.
March 26, 2016
Full of feelings and lovely words..
March 22, 2020
Meh...not impressed!
December 2, 2022
I can’t believe a 14 yo wrote this- something is not adding up.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 284 reviews