Glass Hearts and Broken Promises

by Kayla McCullough, Lisa-Marie Vecchino (Illustrator)

Glass Hearts and Broken Promises is a collection of poetry and prose about heartbreak, self-love, and raw/unfiltered emotions. It guides you through the journey of heartache and reminds you to embrace the love from within.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Personal Development, Ebooks, Self Help

336 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 5, 2022

Reviews

[Devin The Book Dragon · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, I have a Pinterest board that I specifically save poetry and quotes to because I like them. While reading this poetry collection, I could not help but notice that many of these quotes felt oddly familiar to me. I even went back to my Pinterest board for reference, and it really seemed than many of the poems in this collection were eerily similar to writings I see on my board.

I'm not going to say the P word because maybe it's a coincidence and I'm overthinking this all, but it really felt like the author went and read a bunch of angsty heartbreak poems on Pinterest, rearranged the words, and made this collection.

If this is not the case, and I'm simply hallucinating, then to that I say, other poets have written about heartbreak before and been more relatable to me, or I believe their poems were a little wittier and a bit punchier compared to this collection.

There were several poems I did like in this book. I think the author has potential, but this collection was not my favorite collection in terms of poetry.

Received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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

lately I've been feeling like
I'm here but I'm not
like life is moving way too fast
and I can't catch up
like people love me for a second
and the next they don't
it feels like I wasn't made
to exist in this world
like I was made to exist
anywhere but here

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

As soon as I started reading it I related to it and feelings I thought were behind me came to the surface. I love this book so much🥲

[Charmaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything I needed as I heal

[Reading_ Tamishly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you, Andrews McMeel Publishing, for the advance reading copy.

I feel that you would enjoy this poetry collection if you are looking for one at beginner’s level, if you have read and love short simple writing and if you love the themes covered in collections by Amanda Lovelace.

I do feel this collection will be perfect for young adults.

[Elevetha · Rating 2 out of 5]

* An ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

I like reading (good) poetry and writing (bad) poetry, but I've never experienced a break-up.

Someone broke her heart badly. And while I did feel sorry for her, and she did elicit some emotion from me, a lot of times the sheer amount of how much time and emotion she put into being sad about it was too much. Not that I think she should just "get over it", but she wrote 300 nearly identical poems wallowing about it. That's excessive. Especially to read back-to-back-to-back.

It had a few genuinely good lines or poems, and I could maybe see if you were going through a break-up, maybe reading a poem or two a day would be nice (??). But overall, it was over 300 pages of short choppy poems that were mostly essentially the same thing. And the overall theme was you should love yourself first, and love yourself more. I don't agree with that. Should you love yourself enough to stay out/get out of abusive relationships? Yup. Obviously don't let yourself be hurt, and abused, and ridiculed and whatnot. Find someone that loves YOU. But the whole point of being in love, of truly loving someone, is that you love them more than you love yourself.

They left their phone charger downstairs and you're both comfy cozy in bed? Go get it for them.
Only one ice cream bar left? Offer it to them.
They need a kidney? When's the operation, doc?

Love that you're putting yourself first isn't real love at all.

[Meredith Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

i saw a poem from this book and had to get it. accidentally read it in a day 🫢

[Katie ᥫ᭡. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gave me all the feels 🥹💕
So beautiful and nostalgic of all seasons of life.

[Frutis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me cry SO BAD🥹✨️ it was one of the most beautiful things i've ever read

[Núria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este é um livro de poesia que nos fala sobre corações partidos e sobre como superar um desgosto de amor. É ideal para os fãs de Rupi Kaur.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Esta leitura surpreendeu-me muito pela positiva. Não conhecia a autora e fiquei completamente rendida!
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Este livro foi como um abraço pois dava por mim a ler certos poemas e a pensar “eu já estive nesta situação e era exatamente assim que eu me sentia, sem tirar nem pôr”.
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Acredito que muita gente se possa identificar com este livro devido a desgostos que tenha tido no passado ou até mesmo que esteja a viver no presente. É bom sentirmos que as nossas dores, as nossas dúvidas e os nossos receios são perfeitamente naturais e a realidade é que todos nós passamos por desgostos em determinadas fases das nossas vidas. Todos nós aprendemos a viver com um coração partido e a curar as cicatrizes que a vida nos deixou. Somos mais fortes do que aquilo que pensamos.
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Este livro mostrou-me que está tudo bem em não estar tudo bem. Que há coisas que não são para ser. E que as coisas más que acontecem dão lugar a coisas boas no futuro. Basta estarmos de coração aberto e deixar que a felicidade bata à porta.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtcG4lgsX...

[Abby Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, however was about heartbreak and I cannot relate to this so would have rated it higher if it was more relatable. My second poetry book and I would like to read more. Would recommend to a friend going through a hard time.

[Anne-Fleur van Schaik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book its full of poems and quotes that are helping when you struggle with your mental health. Read this book at the moments you need it the most and it’s going to help make your heart more and more healing, Ily 🫶🏻

[Lexington Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was exactly what I needed when I needed it

[Claireroubou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you for handing me the glue I needed.

[Beatrice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

you were never mine to keep
never mine to love
but I've still got a little bit of you
tucked away in the deepest corners
of my heart

Just the perfect time I get to read this poetry collection about heartbreak, grief and healing. It truly made me emotional and I cried while reading some of the poems. I'm going through the pain and each of them feels genuine and heartfelt. I needed to feel everything at the moment. I was vulnerable. It's an everyday struggle to pretend you're okay when you're not. One day, I'll be fully healed an okay. Many thanks to this book because I find comfort as I go through a heartbreaking journey. Keep it up, Ms. Kayla.

Hugs to everyone going through a tough breakup.

[Ash🩷 · Rating 3 out of 5]

“sometimes the things that people
don't want to share with the world the things they think are ugly
or scary
are often the reasons why
we love them so much”

[Kayla Craft · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like I shouldn’t rate this because it’s poetry but it was exactly what I needed 🫶🏼 I really enjoyed reading something different and it was very relatable.

[Jennifer Neider · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I loved how long it was, it’s a nice thick book with 300 plus pages of poems. Poems were relatable from relationships, heartbreak, to healing and self worth. I can’t wait to read her second book, definitely recommend

[Monet C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda repetitive and cliché

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 ⭐️
A wonderful collection of poems with all of the hurt & healing feels ❤️‍🩹

[Sheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Some of the poems were great but there’s way too many errors in the book.

[Miss Shahad · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the book because of a quote in Tik Tok ،
I think the real reason why it’s so hard to let go
Why it’s takes so long is because you still have hope.
And when you have loved someone unconditionally for so long it doesn’t really end
No matter how many times you tell yourself that
It’s really over for you and your heart it isn’t
But remember no matter how much you love them&No matter how hard you try
You can never make the wrong person the right person for you.

that I felt, so I read it and cried. I hugged the book. Thank 💜you ,I liked it very much

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Tragic. Brilliant.

This collection of poems details every feeling you have, and she has, going through a breakup and recovering from that heartache. It is gut wrenching how the words flow on the page, and spot on with every stage of grief. If you’ve recently gone through a breakup, keep tissues handy when reading. It’ll not only help you vocalize your grief, but help you heal.

Truly beautiful. Amazingly written.

[Cheyenne Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this was one of the best things I’ve tried to help my healing process so far. I poured my heart into annotating this and I know it will be something I look back on years from now to see how far I’ve come and how broken I was in this moment

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. I cried. It hit home. I have been following Ms. McCullough for a while on social media. As soon as she announced this was released, I jumped on it. I could not wait to receive it and dive in. It was a book I never knew I needed.

[Ishika · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know that I overthink
and that my mind
is filled with today's anxieties
and tomorrows worries
I know that I overlove
and that my heart
is full of today's grief
and tomorrows hope
I know that I can
be insecure sometimes
and not want to be seen
I know that all of these things
make me
me
but my mind rages
war on my heart
they explode
and they both
tear me apart

but trust me
if I love you
I will think of you often
I will give you my whole heart
and I will make you feel
like you are never an option





at some point I stopped sending you the love letters I write
and I started releasing them to the wind thinking maybe they'd reach you faster years later I think someone else opened them
because the wind brought a promise home from a stranger
and my heart no longer is a home for yours





heartbreak has taught me many things
but the most important one is that
healing does not mean
becoming the best version of yourself
you are always worthy
of everything in life
healing means accepting
that there's a worst version of you
that needs to be loved





you can't choose who you fall for
but can choose who you walk away from and as much as it breaks your heart

I hope you choose you
I hope you choose to let it go
because prioritizing your peace
is never something to feel
ashamed about





I no longer accept inconsistencies
or broken promises
if someone is walking out of my life
I let them go
because it's easier to adjust my life to their absence
than to adjust my boundaries to their disrespect
I'm not looking for some grand love story I'm looking for someone who wants
to walk life's journey with me
so, I'm letting you walk away
because you were never the one
and that's okay





if you're strong enough to love them
you're strong enough to walk away
and start a new beginning

[Catling · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher for providing an ARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

After leaving high school, I kept a diary for a couple years because I was so heartbroken and lonely I didn't know where else to say it. Once, after several sleepless nights, I decided nothing else would convey my pain quite as well as poetry, and so of course I had to write a poem. I was 19, painfully naïve and inexperienced, writing in a language I wasn't really fluent in, drunk on tiredness, and hadn't written poetry since my high school literature teacher had us write one (1) poem when I was 15.

And yet somehow, that awful, trite, clumsy poem still sounded more like poetry - and a lot more heartfelt - than anything I've read in this book.

Glass Hearts & Broken Promises is a very modern collection of poems in that it has no rhymes, no verse, no titles, and barely any punctuation. And that could have been fine! Some of my favourite poems ever are in free verse! Anyone who's ever read any poem Mary Oliver wrote knows free verse can be done well.

Here, however, it served absolutely no purpose. It didn't create any ambiguity and the line breaks didn't highlight anything or make it more poignant. There was no assonance, no rhythm created by line length or repetition - I even struggled to find a single metaphor, anaphora, oxymoron, or literally any other literary device.
The language used was neither flowery nor vivid, and every poem was instead one worn-out cliché after another. For example (and I believe these two lines have their own page) :

"it’s okay to let the tears
wash you clean"

To add insult to injury, the collection clearly does not believe in titles, and so you just go from one page to the next without knowing where (or if?) one poem ends and the other begins, which I found very confusing and frustrating.

But! I hear you argue. It could have all been one long poem, right?

Well, if that was the intention, it also fails, simply because there's usually no continuity between one page and the next, and the random line breaks don't help it feel any less disjointed.

None of that can amound to poetry. Whatever this book is, it's certainly not poetry. It has none of its hallmarks, and because it's so full of clichés, it's not even moving. It's poetry only because it's being sold as such. In reality, this is simply a diary with strange line breaks and a meandering style (for a diary).

I would have been disappointed if that had been as bad as it got, but I might have nonetheless found some pleasure in that strange, sweet pain you get when reading about someone else's pain (or someone else working through their pain?). But even that was impossible, because I felt absolutely nothing.

I firmly believe that for poetry to be profound and touching (or for any writing at all to be emotional, actually), it has to be specific at least some of the time. Don't just tell me you miss and grieve for someone you've lost - tell me that she was constantly wearing mismatched funny socks but you can't remember a single one of them, that you used to sleep face to face and holding hands, that though you've lost the photography, you remember the image: her trying to drink two different drinks from two different glasses through two different straws - that it was your doing and your choice but sometimes you still wish you could sit through one more boring class with her.

Glass Hearts & Broken Promises does none of that, and that's a dealbreaker for me. There are certainly a lot of words associated with vulnerability (pain, broken, grief, miss, etc.) but they're all used so plainly that it's impossible to feel the full weight of them. Language that we're used to is language that becomes purely utilitarian and loses its punch, and that's the only language that's used in this book.

I have two more (comparatively minor) squibbles with this book.
First, some words are outrageously misused (especially "trauma" - never mind that that's entirely telling and not showing). As an example:

"It wasn’t the breakup that hurt the most. [...] It was looking
at our pictures and seeing exactly when you fell out of
love with me—that moment documented for all to see. [...] It wasn’t the
breakup that hurt the most; it was the trauma that came after it."

(Really? Trauma? For context, she doesn't describe anything actually bad, just as painful as hinted at by the sentence about the pictures documenting their falling out of love.)

And second, some lines just don't really make sense. The logic is entirely missing, or at least a big enough part of it that I can't follow.

"sometimes people leave people
not because they’re not in love
but because the love they existed in
was never love at all"

If what they were in was never love at all, then... they weren't actually in love? I don't know, this one confuses me.

I will allow that I've never experienced heartbreak specifically over a romantic relationship, and that I tend to favour nature imagery, when what little imagery there is here has more to do with modern life in cities than nature. That might have affected my reading experience, but can't account for all of my displeasure.

[Nicole Moon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Glass Hearts and Broken Promises by Kayla McCullough is a collection of poetry about heartbreak and healing. It focuses on breakups, moving on, and self-love, and it does so in a very straightforward way.

When I first saw the description for this book, I got really excited because I love poetry that balances between pain and healing, so I was looking forward to the way it could help me feel seen and understood. However, the pain of the past is the biggest focus and the depth it goes to when it comes to healing is quite surface-level. The writing is also very simple and it reads more like a diary or a letter than poetry, which can be a good or bad thing, depending on your reading preferences. I would prefer something deeper & more detailed because it didn't bring me a lot of value like this. A lot of the messages were things I already knew, the writing was too plain for me, and it mainly gave me only negative emotions.

If you like the thought of reading something that feels like a friend is talking to you about their breakup and how they're healing from it (and how you could heal from yours), I think you're going to like it. If you like descriptive poems that are more abstract, this is definitely not for you. I think it could also work really well for people who haven't read a lot of poetry before.

Even though this wasn't really a collection for me, I do think it could bring a lot of value and advice to the right readers. If you're struggling with heartbreak and you want some insight into letting go and learning to love yourself, pick this up!

[Paola Hernandez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yall…. This collection of poems is… *chefs kiss* 🤌🏼
The writing style wasn’t too advanced, it truly was simple and clear. It very much felt like you were reading a journal and that was the beauty of these poems.
I didn’t get as emotional as I thought I would with this book, but I think that’s simply because I’ve finished therapy and am a healed version of myself. 🥹 They definitely resonated with me and I found myself saying “THIS.THIS IS THE ONE!” 100 times 😂 I truly feel like these poems put into words what both versions of me never could. (Healed and unhealed) 👏🏼
I found myself sending pics to my friends and sitting in thought with so many of the poems. I think reading this really put into perspective how far I’ve come on my healing journey. 🥹✨
If you’ve ever been heartbroken, this one is for you. 🫶🏼

[Priyanka Kathe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was gifted to me by my student.
She knows I don't usually read "lovey-dovey" books or even self-help, and had she merely recommended it, I wouldn’t have picked it up. But being the stubborn person she is, she bought it and gifted it to me—because she knew that I would read it then.

And I’m glad I did.

It helped me gain a kind of closure and made me aware of a few things.
Firstly, that I’ve forgotten how to love softly.
Secondly, that in terms of heartbreak, I’ve healed—there’s no place for that hurt anymore.
And thirdly, that I’m in a place where I don’t need rescuing. Maybe what I need now is a little more faith, and a little more hope.

Life feels a little better.

The book is easy to read—you could easily pick it up on a cozy, rainy afternoon with a cup of hot chocolate.
Go ahead. Give it a try.