Review: “The Princess Saves Herself in this One” (Women Are Some Kind of Magic #1) by Amanda Lovelace.

Títle: The Princess Saves Herself in this One

Author: Amanda Lovelace

Book: Women Are Some Kind of Magic #1

Editorial: CreateSpace

Year: 2016

Pages: 199 (Softcover)

ISBN-13: 9781532913686

PVP: 8 € (Softcover) (Amazon)

Mark: 9/10

ABSTRACT

"Ah, life- the thing that happens to us while we're off somewhere else blowing on dandelions & wishing ourselves into the pages of our favorite fairy tales."

A poetry collection divided into four different parts: the princess, the damsel, the queen, & you. the princess, the damsel, & the queen piece together the life of the author in three stages, while you serves as a note to the reader & all of humankind. Explores life & all of its love, loss, grief, healing, empowerment, & inspirations

PERSONAL VALORATION

JUSTIFICATION

The first time I found this book was at Goodreads since it had won the "Goodreads choice awards 2016" in the poetry category. Then I had different encounters with it: ratings, reviews ... that only encouraged me to read it. Finally it was at the beginning of August when I decided to buy it and I sincerely regret not having done it before.

PLOT

Although the book is a collection of poetry, it has a very intense internal storyline. It is divided into four parts -"The Princess", "The Damsel", "The Queen", "You" - in which a variety of themes are treated and the author's story and personal growth is shown. It seems incredible that only a few words (because the poems are quite short) can convey such pure feelings. Amanda deals with the relationship with her mother and her partner, abuse and emotional abuse, friendship, sorority, alcoholism, cancer ... If I had to summarize its content with a single word it would perhaps be resilience, because throughout the book we expose ourselves to positive but also negative experiences, a beautiful collection of chiaroscuros that reveal the process of individual growth that we all feel.

Like all poetry books, words have hundreds of meanings and it is the personal experience of each reader that allows them to interpret one message or another, which causes no one to read the same book. A simple look at the comments in Goodreads shows that there is a great diversity of reviews about it, but a single reality: this book inspires opinions (positive and negative). Personally, I believe that it is a book that allows you to identify yourself in different ways and senses.

Here are shown some extracts that have caught my attention and that you can also find in the Instagram of the author.

WRITING STYLE

It is a book of "modern poetry": it does not follow the traditional rules, it does not have rhyme and it does not have metrics. Many of the criticisms that this book has received are that it is not really about poetry, but about "spacing Tumblr" because of the particular format of the book. However, you just have to read a few pages to realize that the author is totally exposed and creates texts with raw and emotional ideas with which many people feel identified.

On the other hand, I love the book aesthetically: Amanda uses all visual resources as a personal brand telling us her story through line spacing, spacing, typography ...

GENERAL COMMENT

“The Princess Saves Herself in this One” is the book by Amanda Lovelace  with which she won in the poetry category the "Goodreads choice awards 2016" and which starts the trilogy "Women Are Some Kind of Magic". This book is a collection of poems about empowerment, abuse, independence, cancer, love.... A personal and natural story of a person in constant growth. A story that reminds us of the chiaroscuro of our existence and makes us reflect on our own life.

-R.