TandeWrites

I received this book as an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a poetry and prose collection about selfcare, retelling Aphrodite’s empowering story through the past and present. I think this is the best poetry collection I’ve ever read. It’s a beautiful story about forgiveness, dealing with past trauma, and accepting yourself just the way you are.
Reading this book felt like a conversation with Aphrodite herself, talking about her strengths and struggles and life and love. I felt such a strong connection to the story and I found a lot of myself in the pages.

I’m not usually a huge fan of poetry, but I loved the format of this book and it suited the story perfectly. It changed perspective between Aphrodite and the author, and featured a lot of illustrations and typography by the author between the poems which I think would be stunning to see in a physical copy of the book.

I don’t think I will ever recommend a book more than I recommend this one, especially if you’re in the place to read it.

There are so many beautiful quotes I loved from this book. Instead of spoiling too much for you, I will leave you with three of them:

• I was worshipped on the battlefield once. They brought me blood before they brought me perfume. There were wars started in my name.
• When people say you cannot love others until you love yourself, they fundamentally misunderstand love. Nothing thrives in isolation.
• Men wrote the stories of my birth as if they were standing on the shore when I was spat up onto it. They picked up their pens and waxed poetic and nobody questioned it. Nobody asked me instead.