A Strangely Wrapped Gift

by Emily Byrnes, Lizzy Duga (Illustrator)

In these pages, you will find journeys from childhood to today, from mental illness to recovery, from heartbreak to heart growth, from hopelessness to empowerment, and from the ocean to the stars.

Genres: Poetry, Mental Health, Nonfiction, LGBT, Ebooks

186 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 2017

Reviews

[sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Strangely Wrapped Gift is a modern poetry collection centred around themes of love, mental health and loss.

I was initially interested in the collection because of the mental health and OCD themes, as it seemed reminiscent of one of my favourite poetry books 'Captive: A Poetry Collection on OCD, Psychosis, and Brain Inflammation' However, there were probably about six poems total around the subject, and the rest were majorly about love and heartbreak.

I prefer my poetry to have grit, darkness and a subtle message to it. Because of that, I liked the section 'winter' the most but even then I felt like some of the ideas were underdeveloped and stilted.

I tend to evaluate my overall feelings about poetry by the amount of passages I highlighted. In this one, it was around 15 pages or so out of almost 200. While that doesn't seem like that impressive a number, I think I have just read so many bad modern poetry collections that this improved in comparison. I felt like quite a few poems were filler, and didn't serve any purpose except to elongate the book. For example:

"she plants
her feet
and
mountains
rise
for her"

(why are
there
so
many
irrelevant
line breaks?)

or

"You didn't have to break me, just to prove that you are whole"

Some examples of poems I really liked are:

"Cry for Syria
Cry for FGM in Somalia
That will never make the news.
Cry for veal calves and bullfights and elephants and bees.
Cry for girls who think
their worth is measured by the size of the gap between their thighs."

and

"they will try to make their ignorance louder than your love.
They will try to make their fear louder than your cries for justice.
They will try to make their comfort zone louder than your safety.
They try to make it about the constitution or bathrooms or god,
but there is nothing godly about hate"

Overall, I think this was a solid collection, but not life changing. I liked how it tried to stray outside typical modern poetry themes by including political commentary, but I wish it went a little further. Poetry is very personal and subjective, so if the themes interest you I would recommend picking it up when it releases!

Thank you to Central Avenue Publishing for this ARC

Release Date: 10 March 2020

[Alice-Elizabeth (Prolific Reader Alice) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good mental health poetry included in Byrnes' collection. Honest and emotional, I enjoyed reading this one with short length poems but got the message very clearly across!

[Elle · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 stars - A Strangely Wrapped Gift is a collection of short modern poems about love, loss, mental health, recovery and being part of the LGBTQ+ community. It is split into 5 parts: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring and Leap Year, that I all enjoyed equally. There is a consistency throughout the whole book that I really appreciated. I didn't feel like one part was stronger than another as it is often the case with poetry collections.

If you liked "Milk and Honey", chances are you're going to enjoy this collection as well :)

I will definitely look for more of Emily Juniper's work.

Thank you to Central Avenue Publishing for providing me with a free review copy in exchange for my opinion.

[Bexx · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this a four out five stars. I would like to thank Netgalley for the earc I received. All thoughts and opinions are all my own. I really enjoyed this collection of poems, I highlighted some of them. I'm hoping to get a finished once I get the chance. There was a part in the poetry collection that I related to and actually said the same thing last week.

[Jypsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Central Avenue for a complimentary copy. I voluntarily reviewed this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

A Strangely Wrapped Gift
By: Emily Juniper

REVIEW ☆☆☆☆
As a person who has struggled with mental illness her entire life, I found many of the poems within A Strangely Wrapped Gift relatable, relevant and compelling. These words come from a place of truth and suffering and are authentic. Poetry is so open to interpretation, and personal experience shapes perspective. Thus, poems are always personal before anything else. If you have dealt with mental health issues, you might find some commonalities in these poems. I definitely recommend trying this book out for yourself.

[trufflebooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 ⭐
I've come to realise that poetry is similar to music, but I guess it's more poignant. A lot of the lyrics and therefore in poetry; the poems can be extremely personal to the author and harder to relate for many other individuals. So if you can't relate, there isn't a bop you can just bop to, yknow?

My preferences when it comes to poetry, I've realised, tend to be shorter and more meaningful in a vague way. To bring something thought-provoking and high quality in a low quantity format. A Strangely Wrapped Gift had many of these poems and for that, it was great and I could relate to some of it. However, not all of it was (as is normal), so for a lot of it I could only empathise and it wasn't as enjoyable because the experiences mentioned were not relative to my life.

I still enjoyed that it had an emphasis on mental health, but it could have definitely been organised better so that the poems had an order that made more sense. I loved the idea of the seasonal chapters but they felt more chronological to the author's experiences and how they created the poetry rather than the themes from the poems themselves as a whole.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ebook review copy in exchange for a review :)

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured this poetry collection! It felt like just minutes before I had the entire thing read. It was absolutely wonderful. I am officially a fan of Emily Juniper and I can't wait to read more of her work.

Someday I’ll have a daughter, and I hope the earth trembles a little beneath her feet, and that Cassiopeia watches over her as she sleeps, and that the greatest love she ever knows is in herself.

I read that poem as my daughter slept snuggled into me and I thought wow, yes! It literally brought tears to my eyes. As a parent I found that to be such a powerful passage and I'll never ever forget it.

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't realize when I requested this book that the poet is an Instagram poet. I'm not really a fan of that style or of poets like Atticus who post short poems about loving yourself or sadness or not giving up (or how beautiful and magnificent some woman is, that's another popular trope) without really using much in the way of metaphor or other poetic tools. This is also another book that puts the title in parentheses at the end of each poem, which I find kind of gimmicky and really annoying for some reason.

For IG poetry, this was one of the better ones I've read. There were a few poems I did like. One example:

He wanted a taste of my sweet core
without putting in any work.

But you know what they say;
no worker bees, no fruit.

(DRONE)

For the most part,though, most of the poems struck me as pretty basic and predictable. An example:

I don't want someone
to put me back together;
I want someone to
love my pieces,
even the jaged ones.

(PIECES)

It's a nice collection, though, one that many women are likely to relate to. It's also very encouraging at times with poems about not committing suicide and the reader's worth. It's likely to be well liked by many folks, especially younger readers.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

[Jamie (Books and Ladders) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual Rating: 2.5*

There were a lot of good poems in here, but not all of it really captured my attention. I felt myself skimming at some points just so I would be closer to the end. I liked it, but I didn't love it.

[Jessi ❤️ H. Vojsk [if villain, why hot?] · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here‘s to the kids
getting high of music
and drunk off books.
Sometimes,
these good drugs
are the only thing
keeping them alive.

[Bea (beansbookshelves) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an advanced reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

This is a poetry collection about mental health and self-love which I highly recommend to anyone who likes Rupi Kaur or Amanda Lovelace. Emily Byrnes captures extremely well the way we all feel towards specific situations and gives us the brightest poems. It is such a sincere and relatable poetry collection.

[Becs · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you enjoy short poetry which has a strong message but not too much reading between the lines, then you will probably really enjoy this. A Strangely Wrapped Gift is very much an Instagram poetry collection - lots of very short (often one line) poems. This isn't to say they are poor or have limited impact, I think their impact is very much proportionate to the experiences of the reader and quite often their romances, but there isn't very much to them. I guess it's really a matter of taste.

I prefer to read poetry with subtle delivery; stories which I can pick through and decide what they mean to me. That's really difficult to do with poetry like this and often I find that the one liners are designed to be a blunt, sometimes vengeful, approach which doesn't always work for me. I'm just the wrong audience for this collection.

I did enjoy some of the slightly longer poems, particularly those which challenged the media we are presented with, Disney for example, and the message it sends (often incorrectly) to young girls. I also liked that the author tried on a number of occasions to address something we're probably all guilty of - looking the other way instead of facing a truth we wish we didn't know about the world; she does this so well with the meat industry. It might be easier to pretend we don't know where our food comes from, but it certainly forms part of the problem.

I think the poems show so much potential, I just wish she had delivered a collection with more substantial poetry within so that it really showcased her talent.

ARC provided free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Rachel Nicole Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow!

One of my top favorite poetry books I’ve read this year! Absolutely wonderful. Honest. Individual. Greatly spoken. Wonderfully words illustrated to paint beautiful poems. I loved every single one of them. Excellent.

Xo,
Rach

[Michaela (Journey into Books) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable collection that focuses on mental health and in particular OCD. This poetry collection is raw, emotional and honest.

I gave this 3 out of 5 stars.

[Casey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was gonna give this two stars but there’s some poems where the White Women Feminism TM is so strong I can’t deal with it. You write a poem that shows you don’t actually look into Native American issues beyond “Disney bad” and then have one where burning sage is presented as a good thing not respected in its cultural context. Like maybe the author doesn’t burn it herself but it does not look good when she’s trying to do “nods” to real world issues but the poems show no actually in-depth understanding of those issues or the actual communities they affect.

[syd · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book. I loved how Byrnes really put herself into her work. I also thought the small little drawings were beautiful and added a finishing touch to her poems.

[Isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh

[Elsa Gomes (BookishAurora) · Rating 4 out of 5]

➳ Rate:  4/ 5 stars

A collection of poetry centered on mental health, love & heartbreak, loss & recovery and motivational poems too. Short poems with a great deal of emotion.

My favorite section was spring. I highlighted so many of the poems in that one.

“She’s subtle. She doesn’t bloom overnight; she knows that good things take time.”

Will definitely keep reading this poet’s work.

➳ARC kindly provided by Central Avenue Publishing, in exchange for an honest review.

➳ Order at: Amazon UK ⁕ Amazon US

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[Andrea Pole · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Strangely Wrapped Gift by Emily Juniper is a thoughful, measured, and lyrical collection of musings on OCD, relationships, love and longing, and I was completely and utterly captivated through it all. I am a newcomer to the work of Ms Juniper, and she has certainly caught my attention with this impressive compilation of passionate evokation. Verses are organized into the four seasons, along with a final section, Leap Year, and I applaud the refreshing decision to title each entry at the end, rather than the beginning. Once I found my stride with this unusual format, I found it to be quite an effective tool toward emphasis of thought. In short, this collection is, indeed, a gift that you must give to yourself.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Central Avenue Publishing for this ARC.

[Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's so difficult for me to review poetry, it's so personal to the author, and even if I don't connect with it, it doesn't mean someone else won't. I loved the themes of this collection. Love, loss, mental health, recovery, and LGBTQ+.
The style was unique and even though it wasn't a style I prefer, I liked that it was unique. I also liked the consistency through out the book, there's wasn't any noticeable filler poems. Because of the style, I couldn’t really connect deeply with the entire book but I could relate to the themes and I appreciated the consistency.

[Kira · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a stunning poetry collection by Emily Juniper. Her poems are face paced, quickly moving from metaphor to hard truths to challenging stigmas about mental health. For me, the fast paced style really added to the poetry. It made reading it more of an experience, as personally, it represented the fast paced thoughts that comes from having mental health. Going from thinking of absolutely nothing, to recalling multiple things from childhood all at once.

Full review on my blog http://kjeanette.home.blog/

[Missy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have been trying to get more into poetry and I am so thankful to NetGalley that I got the chance to read this book of poetry.

This was a quick read and I do see how this book could move so many people I unfortunately just didn’t connect with it the way I would have liked.

I feel like this definitely describes the female experience that I don’t personally relate to but I know women who could relate to this.

I would be interested in seeing more from this author.

[Shy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley for this one.

This has to be the best book of poetry I've read recently.
Most books are only about love but this one spoke about more than that. recovery, mental illness, depression, OCD. I was impressed by this book. Even had to hold back tears a couple of times. I recommend this book to anyone struggling with anything. Even if it's a struggle against yourself.

[lena☀️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Central Avenue Publishing for providing me with this ARC for review!

This was enjoyable and healing which is what I want poetry to be for me but I did find myself wanting more poems related to mental health. That's what I was expecting when I started but there was a lot more on relationships than I expected.

Some lovely poems though and was overall a good read!

[Geneviève (thefreckledbookworm) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been exploring poetry more and more this year, but I realize I have trouble with actual poetry books (especially in e-copies). What's best for me is definitely the occasional poetry I stumble upon on the internet, or spoken poetry videos (I LOVE those). So it was very hard for me to get into this book and reflect on what I was reading.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a review copy of this book via NetGalley.

A sincere collection with some especially lovely poems within. There was a lot to like here, and I adore the meaning behind the collection's title and the clever flow and formatting within.

[Christine Picard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was beautiful. Spilled thoughts ("instagram-style") really is my favorite way to enjoy poetry at the moment and this collection was just what I needed. Great images and deep meaning, I really loved it. I'll sure read what else she wrote! Loved it!

[Andrea Tomé · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although some parts of this collection are truly beautifully written and a proof of Emily's talent, as a whole this left me quite cold. The parts in brackets were a bit jarring and I didn't feel they contributed to the impact of the poems, and overall I felt this collection could've been more powerful had it been better curated.

[Kirsten Tattersall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

4.5*

This was a very moving, honest collection of poetry. It was full of beautiful imagery and I loved a large majority of the poems in here. I'd really recommend giving it a read.

[Azzurra Nox · Rating 2 out of 5]

I attempted to read this book three times. But it just wasn't for me. I usually love poetry about mental health and darkness. However, the first portion of the book seemed more like prose than poetry. Ultimately, it just wasn't for me.