Welcome to one of the February 10th stops on the blog tour for Please Pick Me by Reina Regina, organized by Feather & Dove Tours.
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About the Book
Please Pick Me
by Reina Regina
Published 11 November 2020
Moonchild Press Publishing
Genre: Poetry
Page Count: 121
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
In a garden of a thousand other volumes, my little yellow book with its earnest plea and hopeful flowers on the cover sits waiting for you to pick it up. It’s got a heart it wants to give away.
These haikus, poems, and prose pieces are about
the miracle of being wanted back by someone we want,
the desperation of hoping they’ll fight harder when they waver,
the rawness of seeking reassurance that we are loved as we are, and
the tenderness we feel when we’re sending love out to others
—all those moments when we are making our need to be accepted plain and praying, please pick me.
This book was born after twenty-six years of learning that it’s okay to want to be wanted, that vulnerability is merely throwing open the gateway to honest connections, and that fighting to be loved the way you deserve is bravery and not weakness.
I hope you open it. I hope it invites you to be open too.
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My Review
My Rating: 4 Stars
Consider “liking” my review on Goodreads.
I was granted complimentary review access to Please Pick Me as part of my participation in the blog tour for this title with Feather & Dove Tours in February 2021. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.
Please Pick Me is a mixed collection of poetry and prose contemplating life, love, and the human condition. I must admit it’s been a long time since I’ve analyzed poetry, my last undergraduate English course was in 2008 and I haven’t read or written much poetry since, but this title was being offered on tour from a company that places an emphasis on SFF books so I figured a collection of poetry that impressed them would be worth the read. It was! I loved this collection.
I particularly enjoyed how free all of the blank verse poems are and how they tend to tell coherent stories in just the right amount of words, but also how the visual form of the poetry on the page, where lines break and stanzas separate, adds to the weight of the stories these poems are telling. I also adored the haikus! Those were my favourites to write back in honours English in high school. I was also charmed in a “what a quirky choice” kind of way by the choice to put poem titles at the ends rather than at the beginning.
Forgive me if I overstep by quoting my favourite haiku, as I don’t believe it was one of the prescribed excerpts for the tour, but this one made me giggle first and then sent my mind wandering on all the different stories I could write base don this simple question: Did any princess / See a knight for the first time / and whisper –oh, shit. {how romantic} page 16.
The contents of this collection are whimsical, profound, and full of wisdom. I thoroughly enjoyed my walk through this poet’s mind, and I will seek out her work in the future!
About the Author
Reina Regina is a writer, professional tarot reader, Instagram influencer, and former nurse.
She is published online as Reina Bambao on 8List, The Manila Times, Play Without Apology, and the Fully Booked First Look Club.
Reina resides in Manila, Philippines, and is the lady of the house for a doctor and two dogs.
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