mermaird's reviews
325 reviews

Dancing Souls is a collection of uplifting and self-empowering poetry. The poems radiate strong yet delicate vibes, and there were several pieces that sound sassy as well. I enjoyed reading this poetry collection, especially the ones that mentioned God's greatness in them. It's not often for me to read poems with religious (Islamic) elements in it, so I really appreciate the poet's take on them.

However, there were more than a few things that I couldn't get through, no matter how much I loved reading Dancing Souls. I'd like to touch upon the language, grammar and punctuation first. I'm very particular about these three matters whenever I read anything, and even if they're free verse poems, I take these matter seriously.

I noticed that the poet tend to use shortened/informal words (e.g. "imma") in her poems, and I find this quite unflattering. To me, a poem should sound graceful—not all the time of course, as the subject of each poetry vary—but using words like "imma" or "wanna" just takes the beauty out of the poetry. Words like that should be reserved for dialogues only. This could possibly be a typing error, but the poet had confused the word "then" and "than". These two words are used in completely different situations, and in 'Do What You Love, Love What You Do', it should have been "then", instead of "than".

I also noticed that a few poems appeared twice. 'Throne'/'The Throne' and 'Hatred' are the ones that I noticed to appear twice in the book. I like the final section of the book, 'Late Night Thoughts', as they felt very raw to me. However, grammatical errors and typos are too glaring on this part, which left me a bit dismayed. There were multiple missing full stops (full stops are important!), spaces before a punctuation mark (there shouldn't be any spaces before a punctuation mark), wrong use of punctuation marks, and a quite messy use of uppercase and lowercase letters.

I do realise that this part of the book was named 'Late Night Thoughts', so these errors are probably meant to be left alone to reflect the impulsiveness of the late night thoughts, but I can't find myself able to get pass them. I also personally think that the quotes from other people were not needed in the book; they felt unnecessary and the poet didn't actually need them to prove her point.

Overall, reading Dancing Souls was fun as I could relate to many of its pieces. The problems that I listed are probably to my personal preference (I tend to judge poetry collection harsher than fiction books) so this shouldn't discourage you to pick up the book.

A Deserving Love is a collection of inspirational words that talks about the true meaning of love that we truly deserve. If I have to be very honest, I couldn't connect well with this collection, but I do appreciate the author's take on innocent and kind love. It's not only meant to be about love towards someone else, but also love towards yourself and towards God.

A Jar of Hope speaks about how difficult facing reality is, but one should not ever lose hope. It reassures the reader that it's okay to be yourself, and that having hope helps us to continue forward with our dreams or goals. This is the kind of book that would be perfect to read out aloud, just so that we can let the words soak into our minds and hearts better when listening to it.

A Leap of Faith feels very personal, as it was written with a gentle tone for those that feels worn out or tired with life. This collection includes inspiring words that may guide readers to have faith in themselves, and to take it easy. It's perfectly okay to have imperfections, all you need to do is have faith in yourself that you can take that leap forward.

A Quote a Day is a beautiful book filled with 30 motivational quotes that are meant to be devoured as constantly as needed. It's a book of comfort that encourages readers to see themselves as who they are; there's no need to change just to fit someone else's standard if you are content with being who you are. This book does not only contain lovely illustrations, but the words are also very uplifting. I don't think it would be wrong to make this book a daily read!

I haven't had the chance to read THUG yet actually (although I've owned a copy of it for years already), but it did not affect my reading at all for Concrete Rose.

The story tells about seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter, who finds it natural to follow the path of his former gang legend father. Dealing with the King Lords, drug dealing, whatever it was, as long as he could provide for his family, he was content with it. He has a beautiful girlfriend, and a cousin who will always back him up no matter what, so life was good enough for Mav. But when a mistake ends him up with a baby in his life, Mav will have to rethink about his life decisions if he plans to keep himself and his family together.

I think what's most endearing about Concrete Rose is that Mav did not run away the moment he found out he had a baby. He accepted the fact that he was the father, despite the fears that he had. I expected a teenage boy would have fled the moment the truth came out, but surprisingly that was not the case at all with Maverick Carter. Sure, there had been moments where Mav wanted to give up, but all new parents would've had the same fleeting thought; parenting is difficult after all.

I never had the experience to see how a baby is taken cared of for 24 hours, so this book made me appreciate my parents and all other parents out there for never giving up on their child. I knew taking care of a child would not be easy all the time, but just... wow. I guess I did underestimate the hardships a little, after all.

I would say that there are two things that made me love and appreciate Concrete Rose so much:

1) The fact that Mav did not give up on his son. He tried his best for his baby, and he did all he could for it. Just because he did a mistake, and just because he was young, he did not make it an excuse to screw up more. Even when one of his loved ones was murdered, which threatened to break him, he still held on to the responsibilities that he has for his family, and I believe that's what makes him a real man.

2) Actual responsible and caring adults. I've always had a problem with contemporary young adult books: they always seem to lack adult characters that are good for the main characters. Mav's mother is amazing. Some mothers would've given up on their child or be constantly angry, for what she had to go through, yet Mav's mother never did it. Sure, she probably went through disappointments towards her son, but she never gave up on him and was constantly there to guide him. I guess that's why Mav never gave up on his own son. Mr. Wyatt is another great adult character as well in Concrete Rose. He might've been seen as someone too strict or prudent, but he wanted the best for Mav as well. He helped Mav a lot in his own ways.

Overall, Concrete Rose is a beautiful book about family, loss and the responsibilities of being a parent and towards those that you love. It has its fair share of intensity, but I think it's still a rather light read that I could enjoy without getting too overwhelmed. For those that have read and loved The Hate U Give, I'm sure your experience reading Concrete Rose would be more pleasing. But for those who haven't picked up THUG yet like me, Concrete Rose can still be read as a wonderful standalone novel. I do think reading THUG after this will feel great nonetheless, as I've read how Mav went through his early phase of fatherhood.

Many thanks to Pansing for sending me this ARC in exchange for my honest review.