Empty Hotel Rooms Meant for Us

by Christina Hart

An alternate cover for this ASIN can be found: here

This collection of poetry focuses on dismembered loves, present and past, as past lovers aren't actually in the past for the author. She carries parts of them with her, even though their hearts are no longer hers. The companion chapbook, Letting Go Is an Acquired Taste, is available now.

Genres: Poetry, Ebooks

47 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 29, 2015

Reviews

[Neil Franz]

Pretty decent collection of poems. Some are good but mostly, are meh. I like poems that conjure certain emotions in me but this book failed to deliver that.

[Sasha Elise]

I enjoyed it, I always do. I actually highlighted things this time around.

[Rachel Nicole Wagner Martinez]

Emotional

This book dug up feelings I didn't even realize I still had hidden in my heart. My favorite is Me, You and the Moon. Wow. What an emotionally stirring set of poems. I love this because it feels so raw, real and unedited. One of my favorites, for sure.

Xo,
Rach

[Logan February]

Enchanting from start to finish. This collection is honest and it holds you by the throat. I found myself wishing for more pages.

[Jamie (Books and Ladders)]

Look I am called a Drama Queen by a lot of people but even this poetry collection was too much for me. There were some poems I really enjoyed - like all the ones about space and the stars - but I think that was more about me liking space and the stars than the poems themselves. This felt like I was reading someone's diary and I wanted to put the author's head between my hands and shout some sense into her the whole time. There are many better collections of poetry than this one.

[Samantha]

Often times I find it hard to review poetry because I just get caught up in how it made me feel. Well, this book didn't make me feel anything. I just couldn't connect with the poems, there was nothing that touched me, they were just words. And that fucking sucks. I couldn't give it 1 star because there was a couple poems that I liked a bit.

[Shelby Leigh]

I really enjoyed this collection and found many of the poems to be very relatable to me. I also really liked how Hart wrote about unusual topics, things most people would not think about, such as "humanity in Walmart." I found myself thinking about those poems long after I finished reading. I really enjoyed this short and sweet collection!

[Kat Savage]

This literally gave me goosebumps. So well done.

[Elena ( The Queen Reads )]

Sometimes I wonder if they ever thought we’d make it – I still can’t bring myself to tell them that we didn't.

[Rehan Abd Jamil]

More sadness and I'm currently craving for banana pancakes..

[Alexa]

“I wanted them
to know what it was
like to love you.”

Christina Hart’s poetry was sincere and lovely more often than not, but it was also familiar, and not just in the oh-I’ve-totally-been-there way. Hart’s words are simplistic and her poems frequently very short, with little to no notable variance in style or tone, and, unlike the similarly simplistic poetry of, say, Rupi Kaur or Nayyirah Waheed, often lacks a suitably strong punch . Additionally, much of her poetry comes off as overly purple, sometimes even a little melodramatic and cliché (as in “The Dark Pretty Things”).

Empty Hotel Rooms Meant for Us is, overall, a beautiful and extremely interesting but also very static collection of poems that contains enough gems (like “Dark Lights”, “You, Me, and the Moon”, “Back Alley”, and the titular “Empty Hotel Rooms Meant for Us”) to mark Hart as a more-than-decent poet with loads of potential and lots of interesting ideas.

[Porscha]

I would give it 2.5 stars, so I’m rounding up here. Perhaps it’s because i’m in a different stage of life and don’t see my former relationships as better in hindsight, or anything worth clinging to, but a lot of these poems seemed trite to me at worst and unfinished and unedited at best. They didn’t necessarily compel me or evoke anything in me other than mild indifference. My favorites were “never enough” and “dismembering lovers.” Both show the author’s promise and potential, and I wouldn’t be opposed to reading more from her later. I think the best executed was “romance novels,” and I sort of wish it had come first to lay the groundwork for the tone of the rest of the collection.

[Jennae Cecelia]

The title is what peaked my interest from the start but, I really enjoyed this book of poetry. The mixture of long and short poems was perfect! Often times when reading poetry I desire for the poem to keep going and learn more about what the writer was thinking. Hart has a beautiful way of wrapping up each poem so you are left thinking hard about what scenario she was in when she wrote it but also can make your own conclusion from your personal experience.
Great read! I look forward to exploring more of Hart's other books!

[Mery ✨]

4.5/5

Just as the cold color of sunlight through the window on a winter morning, this book effortlessly conjures an atmosphere of gentle loneliness as you wander through the author's landscape of leftover love.

It is beautiful in a way that crumpled sheets on an abandoned bed can be - you know something magnificent happened, now here is the story of what comes after that.

Resonating, captivating, and haunting!

[K.Y. Robinson]

I swear Christina Hart has the best book covers. The contents inside did not disappoint either. This book is definitely a must read. Brings many feelings of nostalgia. I only wished it was longer though.

[Janaya]

This.

This has instantly become a dark gutting favorite of mine. I was entranced from the first poem and couldn't stop until I read it twice through.

[Glenda Woodson]

So many feels. Just wish it was longer!!!

[Savannah]

Wonderful!

Until here recently I was never a huge fan of poetry! I love the style of this and it was a quick read!

[mar✰]

“I knew you then
and I like to think
I still know you now.”

[Cozy Beauty Reads]

This was a short book of poems basically about love and what's it like to lose the person you love. Although I personally didn't feel a strong connection with most of the poems I did still enjoyed reading the author's experience.

In a way I couldn't relate to the author with the way she describes being in love, although I have been in love and know about heartbreak the author's poetry just didn't touch me they way some poetry has.

overall I strongly believe this book of poetry is very beautiful and honest and I enjoyed the writing style of the author. I just wish I could had connected more with the words of the author and applied that to my own experiences. Would I recommend this book of poetry? Yes. Simple because if you are looking for something different to read that's short yet has beautiful writing then I would say read this. I guess everyone will come out with a different opinion based on how the author uses her words to showcase the reader how she is feeling and or want the reader to feel.

Rating: 2.5

[Kenya Wright]

I salute the author for putting her collection out. However, I didn't connect to her words as I love to do. There were definitely some winners in the collection for sure. But many of them felt like she was holding herself back. It's a weird thing to say, but her poetry showed her talent, yet also revealed that she could've gone deeper.

So, I'm def going to check out any future collections from her because I know the talent is there, but something held her back this time. I'm hoping she breaks through whatever wall it was and take bigger risks. Go there. Show us what's really going on in her heart, whether she thinks we would like it or not.

[Ramya]

"I knew you loved music.
I knew you’d make it one day, with or without me by your side.
I knew your voice, when you talked and when you sang and whispered and laughed.
I knew it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard,
and whether you were singing or not it all sounded like music to me."

"I knew your eyes and the way they’d look back at me
in the same way, mine were looking at you."

[Dahlia Eleanor]

I've read this book before and yet still; I am floored by Hart's words. She has a way of writing poems that speak to my very soul, and it was only in the third poem, with the lines “And even when I’m not wearing that jacket/my pockets are always full of pieces of you.” That made the memory of this lovely book come rushing back to me.

Read full review here

[emily 🪴]

despite it being so short, i honestly didn't think that i was going to make it through this collection. i've been reading so many great poets and collections recently that this one just didn't hit me like those did and i'm forced to compare it to those. i've read other collections by christina hart and loved them, so i'm not sure what happened with this one... it just honestly wasn't for me.

[Ally Guay]

Meh. I am not jumping out if my seat with this one. I connected with a few of the poems, but the majority were either not my taste in writing, or it went right over my head and maybe, I did not fully understand in all it's depth. The poems were beautiful. Just because it wasn't completely my cup of tea, does not mean that others won't enjoy it. ☺️

[Isabelle]

Love and loss

To me this book was about being broken. It felt bitter, desperate and raw - I liked the details which made it so personal: a past lover bringing a milkshake in his pocket, for example. My favourite was 'Humanity in Walmart' and I would have wanted to read more poems like this in the collection.

[AJ Perez]

Not bad, but Hart’s other books are definitely better than this. The author’s touch is still ingrained in the poems but I think the simplicity of things was lost somewhere that’s why it’s so difficult to relate on. I found myself turning the pages until I’m on the very last one with nothing to read anymore. Still, I’m looking forward to reading other Hart’s books.

[Shannon O'Connor]

Beautiful

A beautiful collection of poems about the author holding on to a love that can never be. Her internal and external struggles with moving on and holding on are evident in every poem. Extremely relatable as a fellow writer as several poems touch on the reality that writers have a harder time letting go as the beauty of heartbreak is so easy to write about.

[Bree Hill]

Recommend

I seriously wanted more from this collection! I could've read 40 more pages of these. Very nostalgic for that love that just could never quite be..because of LIFE. Very nostalgic of writing poetry in composition books in high school. Really good, quick read

[Lindsay Rae Meier]

Beautifully written! My only wish was that it was longer. I had just started to get emotionally invested into the flow of it, and then it ended.
Looking forward to future releases!

Cheap Wishes was a personal fave, that hit home hard for me.