There Are Girls like Lions by Cole Swensen | Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2.5)

As a note, a copy of this novel was sent to me via NetGalley by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not effect my opinions in any way.

While I didn't totally hate There Are Girls like Lions, and found a good few poems to be thought-provoking, new-to-me and powerful, the collection as a whole just didn't work for me. Not completely. I found that the foreward was wonderful, that there were some standouts in prose, but the better portion of this collection felt choppy and incoherent. And I'm so, so, so disappointed in myself for just not connecting with it full-time.

But, it happens. My experience with There Are Girls like Lions wasn't fully negative but it wasn't exactly positive, either. In the better moments, there were various poems that made me nod my head in something like encouragement or agreement. In its lesser moments, I spaced out and had that nagging thought: am I going to finish it? In its in-between moments, I had just enough curiosity to finish the collection and consider what I was feeling.

My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins | Rating: ★★★★☆

Spinning back around to my original focus of the month–damn health got in the way, didn’t it?–Christmas. Or rather, holiday themed stories. It would seem that the most obvious pick of recent releases would be My True Love Gave to Me, a collection of some of the most delightful holiday stories told by the best of today’s young adult authors, but the truth was I didn’t actually finish it until…

FIVE MINUTES AGO? Okay hear me out, I have a good reason!

I bought myself a copy of the book last year and read the first three or four stories only to find that one of my best friends couldn’t afford to get himself something that year (he spent his money on family and friends and of course his bills and such) so I asked him, “Is there anything else you would want?”

(I, of course, already had a present for him and gave it to him earlier that week with strict orders not to open it until at least Christmas Eve. I played it off that I wasn’t about to buy him more so it wouldn’t make him feel bad. He probably didn’t buy it all that much but is a good sport… sometimes.)

The list was pretty short considering his varied taste but it did include this little guy (he is a massive fan of Gayle Forman and David Levithan) and given the bad news that there is only one book store in my area (and no way was I driving to Chicago a week before Christmas–imagine the traffic!), all leading up to there not being any copies left in stock, I decided to wrap up my copy with the rest from his list as opposed to giving up on completing his want list.

Such A Pretty Face by (Various Authors) | Rating: ★★★★☆

"What’s a frickin’ enormous chin hair between friends?"

When I was in my early teens, I needed a book like this.

By the time I purchased it, however, I was nearing the end of my high school career. But even so… there’s something about each short story featured in Such a Pretty Face that touches my heart and makes me smile. It certainly made me feel like less of an idiot, and it made the memories of my early teenage days bug me less and less.

(Even the introduction lends a hand at creating a sweet atmosphere for the stories that follow.)

Inside this novel, is a collection of short stories meant to inspire you to embrace all forms of beauty, by varied authors you may already know: Lauren Myracle, Mary Ann Rodman, Chris Lynch, Louise Hawes, Jacqueline Woodson, Norma Fox Mazer, Tim Wynne-Jones, Jamie Pittel, J. James Keels, Ron Koertge, Ellen Wittlinger and Anita Riggio. If you don’t know some of them at the start, you will remember them by the tales they tell within.