I have been loving short form poetry lately and this book was such a impactful one to add to my repertoire. The poems are both full of pain and healing and I felt connected to the author while reading them. Though a quick reach this is one that I think will stick with me for a while.

Enjoyable! I wouldn't rate this a 4 but it was very close. I really fell in love with some of the writing and I look forward to more from this author.

I loved the visual aspects of this book however the poetry style unfortunately wasn't for me and I did not finish it. Thank you for the opportunity :)

THIS WAS BEAUTIFUL.
This was a poetry book all about heartbreak. I normally feel like I can’t relate much to heartbreak, but this was written so WELL that I felt myself caught up in the words and felt how heartbreaking it is. The writing was so beautiful! I found myself absolutely wrapped up in this, which doesn’t happen a lot with poetry. But I was captivated. It read as so raw sometimes that it almost hurt me. I highly recommend if you’re looking for beautifully written poetry about heartbreak and how people just don’t get it sometimes.

I was given this E-ARC by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Over the past year, I’ve been more inclined to read poetry along the lines of r.h.Sin and Rupi Kaur. Trista Mateer can definitely fall into this category of poets who truly write from experience and hit topics such as love, loss, letting go, and reclaiming of self. Honeybee is one such documentation.

One thing I love about this book is that it doesn’t conform to any one pattern of poetry. There is no rhyme or reason, but it’s free. It can transform into anything, whether it be one sentence or a whole a page. It’s something that you can tell that it’s just one piece of a larger story and that you’re just seeing a piece of some greater emotion.

Overall, I thought it was good. I didn’t connect very well with some of the poems, but for others, it might just hit home.

Breaking up and letting go

This is a raw and emotional outpouring in poetry and prose describing the break-up of a relationship and the difficulty afterwards in letting go.

Trista Mateer approaches this subject in a very different way using an original format. The content is dense and unrelenting, with only occasional touching and gentler moments. It moves from the first moments of breaking up, to the reality of the situation hit home and the effort to pick up the pieces. The use of language is accomplished and the content pours out across the pages in an emotional stream.

But, for some reason, a quarter way through, I began to feel detached and not emotionally involved at all. There were moments which anyone who has been through the ending of a relationship will instantly recognise, but it was all rather repetitive and full of anger and self-pity. It would have been a relief to have had an occasional flash of humour, however dark. The flow was also muddled with the complication of the sexual make-up of the narrator with constant references to it - lesbian, bisexual? It was difficult to tell, and in any case, did this really matter?

I am sure many will enjoy this book and find it moving. It just wasn’t for me.

Jane

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

I enjoyed this collection of poetry and the varied lengths and types of poems within. I appreciated the variation in tone from poem to poem, as I felt it accurately reflected the process of letting go and the conflicting emotions that go along with it. I don't currently have any poetry books in my collection that focus on bisexuality or same sex relationships, so this will be a good one to help round out my collection to capture the idea of love from all perspectives. I think that many people will be able to connect with Trista Mateer's work, as love and heartbreak are universal to us all, regardless of sexual orientation.

I didn't love them, but I didn't hate them. I just don't think that these poems were for me - because that's how poetry is, it's either for you..or it's not.

Although these weren't for me, I can still appreciate the writing, and how it was clearly done with passion and emotion. The poems are pieced together so they flow perfectly from start to finish.

These are not bad poems; this is not bad writing.
It's nothing that I can personally rave about, but I can say that it's definitely worth picking up and giving it a fair chance.

This is the first Trista Mateer collection and I've read and I don't think I've ever read poetry that has left such an impression. Mateer not only presents her poetry beautifully, but she fuses it with so many elements of her own life in multiple art forms. This is synthesis and fusion: Memories are made doubly poignant through the notes in her own handwriting and the flowers pressed between pages - they seem to grow out of those words and into our reality. Her thoughts on love, sexuality, and life itself are something applicable to any audience because all of us have felt some form of pain and heartbreak. This is a work which translates feeling into an endless stream of beautiful metaphors. First love is captured in carousels and chocolate milkshakes, and loss is the honey bees gradually going missing from the world. It isn't always easy to open up something so personal and to make it familiar enough to others that the resonance is louder than a storm of honey bees. Much akin to the stars Mateer describes, the ones that burn out but still burn the brightest from an earthbound perspective, Honeybee is one which isn't going to fizzle out for a while. A must read for 2018.

This is a beautiful collection of tender and heartbreaking poetry. Trista has given everything and the quality of the writing is fantastic.

"I called you honeybee for seven years. Now the bees are disappearing and so are you. I'm trying my best not to find this poetic." - I wouldn't call this book a poetry collection, though it definitely is full of poetry, but not every piece in here is a poem (not in my eyes), some read like diary entries, some like notes, but there's still a poetic prose. It all adds up and creates a journey, journey through love and forgiveness and moving on. I find a big portion of this book relatable and it definitely feels like reading my own thoughts and experiances in another person's words. Sometimes it's beautiful, sometimes it's casual, it's real. There is also some light humor, like a piece entitled "Another Obligatory Poem Comparing A Girl To Something Consumable".
It's worth noting that it's a story about the relation(ship) between two young women and contains some truths about struggles with bisexuality (self-acceptance, labelling, stereotypes etc.), which may be thought provoking and is definitely an important matter.
The beautiful cover and scans, drawings, handwritten notes inside of the book only add to the experience, quite personal, a bit secretive (like going through someone's journal) of reading this book.

3.5/5 (7/10) - recommended especially to everyone who appreciate openness, softness, exploring their own feelings and ever struggled with letting things go.

None of these poems connected for me. Felt a bit like reading a social media feed instead of poetry. Maybe I am not within the target audience age range.

As a self-proclaimed poetry hater this was never going to be a mind-blowing reading experience for me. I thought it might help open the door to the world of contemporary poetry, enlighten me to a style of poetry that I actually enjoy. And it did that, in a way. It proved to me that this is the style that I most definitely do not enjoy.

Honeybee, at first glance, appears to be very similar in style to Rupi Kaur’s milk and honey in that the poems are short, have an overarching theme of despair, and are very women-centric. Once you get into the meat of Honeybee, however, you realise that this is not the case. The ‘poems’ in this feel more like diary entries, or very short flowery correspondences with a lost love. Which I get is a stylistic choice of free verse but it just… doesn’t work. For me at least. I would rather have read a novel based on the themes, as each poem felt like a snippet of prose anyway.

Although, I actually don’t think I’d want to read a novelised version of these events, either, as there is a heavy theme of love throughout but it’s tinged with a cringe amount of despair that just feels unhealthy. I didn’t enjoy all the pining and the inability to let someone go, wanting to stay with them even though it was destructive, and I actually felt kind of… gross as I was reading. The vibe came across as obsessive, maudlin, and codependent, not wistful and reminiscent whilst trying to move on.

I will say, though, that I appreciated how the collection seemed to tell a story. I could easily follow what was going on, even though there were no names and minimal details about the situation. And it was a super quick read that wasn’t tricky in terms of language or style.

If you’re a fan of romantic contemporary poems then this is probably an excellent collection for you, and I’d recommend getting a physical copy as the scans of handwriting and pressed flowers lost their magic in the digital copy. But if - like me - you can’t stand romance or poetry don’t do what I did. Don’t put yourself through the pain of reading Honeybee.

What a quietly heartbreaking collection. I can see fans of Milk & Honey being a big fan of Honeybee. This collection discusses bisexuality, grief, heartbreak, and loneliness. Beautiful.

While poems centered around love, lost or otherwise, are not my favorite, I see great value in this book for younger readers. It will appeal to students and young adults who need a doorway into poetry, or a mirror in which to see parts of their identity. Enjoyable read, I look forward to seeing what this poet does in the future.

Moving and incredibly personal, the intricate language will appeal to any fans of Milk and Honey and Bone.

These poems are honest and heartfelt. Not masterful in any way. Mostly short prose like paragraphs, but the emotion is felt. Enjoyable but a little amateur.

I was interested in reading this collection because I loved the cover, I'm not going to lie to you. I was sold on this collection as soon as the author mentioned Andrea Gibson, who has moved me to tears on more than one occasion. I was utterly convinced as soon as I read the first poem. 

This collection is such a journey. It could be read on multiple levels. At face value, it's the story of someone really not handling a break-up. On a deeper level, this is a story of healing, of changing, and of holding onto some of the past because it's not realistic to expect to let go. 

Poetry is such a subjective thing, it's hard to anticipate how someone else will read them, and it's difficult, therefore, for me to tell you that you should read this collection or that you are going to love it because honestly some people just won't. But if you are like me, and you appreciate a good metaphor and a heartwrenching final line then you should definitely check out this collection. 

My rating: 4/5 stars

I received a digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This was a beautiful and heartfelt book about having a broken heart. Anyone who has experienced even a mild broken heart can relate.

At first, I was a little put off by the repetitiveness of the poems, and wondered when I was going to read about something other than this one person. But then I got over that and really started to love the poems. Some of them I thought were clever and even made me chuckle, like "Another Obligatory Poem Comparing A Girl To Something Consumable," "I Have A Postcard Mouth," and "So That's About It." Some I thought were beautiful and heart-wrenching, like "Hands In The Sun," "Untitled," "Leftovers," "How I Asked You To Stay," and "What I Would Tell You If I Were Not Stubborn." Lines like "My heart barely trembles / when I shove it toward a stranger," and "When a girl who used to leave her heart in / my teeth," and "At this point it's not about finding someone / to replace you. I have spread my love all over / the place. / It's about trying to sleep knowing / I live in a world that has your hands / in it" were so gorgeous. I liked that there were a lot of prose poems and short poems that really kept the flow of the entire book interesting.

What really makes this book stand out and why I would recommend it is that it captures the post breakup pain and healing so perfectly. That revolving around someone, loving them but not, wanting them but not, needing to communicate with them but you can't so you write instead - all of that is something I've experienced before, and I'm sure most people have as well. She really does a good job of beautifying all that.