The Princess Saves Herself In This One by Amanda Lovelace

“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.

Song For This Book: Like Two Stones by Bear Carver
Why? The references to kings and queens feels very similar to this book.

3/5

This book caught my eye online a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t quite get it out of my head. After a while, I figured that I should just pick it up, since I was looking at it every time I went to the bookstore anyway.

This poetry book is highly praised around the internet and has even been nominated for a Goodreads award. So I went into this book with really high hopes and lots of expectations. And it was fine, but I wasn’t nearly as impressed with it as others seemed to be. It seemed a bit over dramatic at times, and I’m not entirely sold on the poetry itself. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t as good as the internet led me to believe it would be.

The Good Points of The Princess Saves Herself in This One:

I love the way Lovelace puts her words together, and how she expresses some difficult and serious things throughout the story. The comparisons she uses are brilliant and her way of expressing herself is fantastic.

This could have been super cheesy. A book about princesses and queens and damsels? That has a lot of potential to go poorly. But Lovelace uses the references just enough to give you the consistent theme, but not so much that you feel like it’s beating you over the head.

This book is so raw and honest, which is great to see in a book. This is something that is easier when it’s autobiographical as this book is, but not many books are as hard hitting as this. Add in some encouragement, especially in the last section of the book, and this has a lot of hard hitting potential.

The Downsides of The Princess Saves Herself in This One:

Is
this
really what
they
call
poetry
these days?

There were maybe 6 ‘poems’ in this book that I would actually call poetry. The rest was just artfully arranged sentences. When you go into a book expecting poetry, and then you get this, it’s hard to get past. An eight year old could write poems like this – and if I remember correctly from elementary, this wasn’t acceptable to hand in to your teacher as poetry. Granted, an eight year old couldn’t make the references or come up with these sorts of ideas, but even so. We all study poetry in school as part of the English curriculum, so let’s put that knowledge to use. Or, at least, be more careful when we categorize books.

All in all, I did enjoy this book, even if I don’t consider it real poetry. It’s a quick and easy read, but there’s a lot of great topics and struggles and encouragements throughout. It’s raw and hard hitting and empowering. Kudos to Lovelace for taking it on such serious stuff and talking about it. If you love pretty writing and empowering stories, definitely check this one out. If you’re a serious poet or read a lot of poetry, you may want to read a little in the bookstore before actually buying it.

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