This is a great read. Although promoted for young adults, I would not put myself in that class and enjoyed it. It is written as poetry and because of this clever style, it is able to tell the story in a more descriptive way without using lots of words. It is simple yet very effective and it does a good job of portraying the complexities of a teenager finding her voice within a culture where is is often suppressed.

I'd only intended to read the first couple of pages of Poet X to see if I was interested in reading it and the next thing you know, and hour has passed and I had finished it.
I don't read much poetry but i read Clap When You Land earlier in the year and loved it so thought I might enjoy more books from the author. Acevedo didn't disappoint and managed to navigate difficult topics in a beautiful and meaningful way. Her prose was captivating and made The Poet X a very special read.

This is a powerful book about finding your voice in a world that wants you to be quiet, and finding your path in a family that expects you obey and conform. The story of a poet discovering the power of her words is written in verse, each section delivering a glimpse of the narrator's life - her relationship with her mother, her rebellion against her religious upbringing, her forbidden friendship with a boy from school. The verses are raw, punching home the desperation of the unread poet, and the speaker without a voice.

Like 'The Black Flamingo' by Dean Atta, or 'On the Come Up' by Angie Thomas, this is a book about finding yourself, and finding a way to express who you are, whatever the people around you expect. Xiomara, the narrator, writes in secret about her life and her dreams. She can't let her family know about her poems, and she has no way to share them, until her English teacher invites her to join the Poetry Club at school. She has to lie to her mother about where she is - she's supposed to be at her confirmation class at church - but through Poetry Club she discovers spoken word, open mic nights, and performance poets. She finds her voice.

This is a book about heartbreak and recovery, about holding on and letting go, about fighting expectations and demanding to be heard. It's about family, friendships, and fighting for the things - and the people - you love. It's gritty and cruel and real. It's a tough journey with an uplifting message about the power of words, and it's an inspiring read.

3.5 stars.
This was just as powerful as I was expecting it to be, although overall it seemed to pack less of a punch. After reading Clap When You Land, I knew I was in for an emotional rollercoaster but this one didn't feel as profound to me. Perhaps it was the way I read it, I listened to Acevedo's other novel as an audiobook and I feel that stories written in verse are more effective when told that way. The plot was interesting and the characters developed over the course of the novel, I just didn't feel overly attached to any of them or their final outcome. The writing, as always, was insanely beautiful and moving and I still cannot fathom how Acevedo is able to tear my heart out with a single sentence.

Elizabeth Acevedo is becoming one of my favourite authors and I’m so grateful to have been given this book to read.

This book has the same taste of her other books, as in it has an incredible young woman protagonist who is looking to find her feet in an environment that doesnt always let her. Xiomara is a poetic and empowering young woman who loves hip hop, and questioning the environment around her. I love her relationship with her brother Xavier. I think Xiomara is a strong character that many woman will look up to. This is a short, condensed read but very worthwhile.

Xiomara lives in the shadow of the person other people want her to be. Her true voice flows in the poems in her notebook that she doesn’t have the courage to share. But rebellion is bubbling to the surface. She needs to be free, to learn what it means to be honest with herself and reach for her potential in a complicated world.

I had been meaning to read this book since it was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize in 2019, so I was pleasantly surprised to see it back on NetGalley and I requested it straight away from the email newsletter. Verse novels are something that has recently caught my attention in the past few years, the spaces in between the words are just as important as what is said. Less is definitely more and it perfectly shows you the spirit of Xiomara and her conflicting emotions. In fact, I enjoyed Acevedo’s writing so much that I borrowed Clap When You Land from my local library as soon as I finished The Poet X as I wanted to wallow in her words for a bit longer.

The Poet X is an honest & raw portrayal of a life in a state of flux that needs to break free from the emotional bonds of others.

I think I might be in the minority of people who didn't absolutely love The Poet X with all my heart. I' not going to sit here and say it was terrible because it absolutely wasn't. I will, however, say that it took 220+ pages for me to be really engaged and captivated by the book, which is altogether too long, in my opinion.

I really loved the sibling relationship in this between Xiomara and Xavier (Twin). In fact, I loved several of Xiomara's relationships, including her friendships with the poetry club, with Caridad and her relationship with Aman. She's a very different person with each of them: tough with Caridad, soft with Twin, vulnerable with Aman. I like that her relationships give her so many dimensions. There were so many moments of relatability throughout this book, the sexism and pure bias that runs rampant throughout multiple cultures and religions. It was interesting to see Xiomara work hard to really try to find her identity in the midst of everybody trying to force her into an old, used, and outdated mold.

As I said at the start, though, I did think that this book took way too long to really captivate me. It was at around page 228 when the drama began to unfold that I really started to feel like this book could have been life-changing, and 228 pages (of 368) is just a little too far in. Had the book kept this level of consistency, I definitely would have given it a much higher rating because the final third was phenomenal. Yes, I cried. So, for me, this book had potential, but it wasn't perfect. I'm hoping that's a The Poet X thing and not an Elizabeth Acevedo thing, as I'm really excited to read With The Fire on High and Clap When You Land!

I'll drop some of my favourite quotes below:

"When your body takes up more room than your voice
you are always the target of well-aimed rumors,
which is why I let my knuckles talk for me.
Which is why I learned to shrug when my name was replaced by insults.

I've forced my skin just as thick as I am."

----------

It's not any one thing
that makes me wonder
about the capital G.O.D.

About a holy trinity
that don't include the mother.
It's all the things."

----------

"That whole first class,
I touch my tongue to the word volition,
like it's a fruit I've never tasted
that's already gone sour in my mouth.

----------

"If Medusa was Dominican
and had a daughter, I think I'd be her.
I look and feel like a myth.
A story distorted, waiting for others to stop
and stare."

----------

"When I'm told to have faith
in the father the son
in men and men are the first ones

to make me feel so small.

That's when I feel like a fake."

----------

"She knew since she was little,
the world would not sing her triumphs,
but she took all of the stereotypes
and put them in a chokehold
until they breathed out the truth."

----------

Thank you to netgalley, Elizabeth Acevedo and Electric Monkey for providing me with an e-copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

I fell in love with it. It was so fresh and it swept me of my feet.
If I may make one suggestion, listen to an audiobook, the voice of the author, amazing Elizabeth Acevedo, gave me chills.
The Poet X tells a story of Xiomara, a teenagers, whose growing body start to make her uncomfortable: stupid comments at school, creepy smiles from the boys on the street and it also takes away this little trust her mother, whose faith is more of a obsession, was giving her.
The only thing Xiomara wants, is to be invisible in her own body. She lacks confidence and people who care about her start to worry: her twin brother who is hiding his own big secret, her best friend, and a teacher who made X in love with poetry. Can Xiomara face all these problems and find herself and even, maybe, trust a boy?

This is such a great read.
Well paced with a strong lead character and a great storyline. It's easy to fly through this book in one sitting.
I highly recommend.

In the Poet X we follow Xiomara as she struggles with the pressures of navigating her world with strict parents and a growing doubt in her faith. We follow as she begins to lose herself in the world of slam poetry and a potential love interest.
This book is without a doubt one of my favourite reads, in a very long time. I read it in pretty much one sitting, possibly stirred on by the verse, which made it so smooth and easy to continue turning the page without a care for the time going by. With that being said, it is an absolute testament to Acevedo that a book that felt so light and easy to consume, covered such tough and weighty subjects. This is a story that I know so many young people need, a story that navigates growing up in such complex detail.
I cannot wait to read more of Elizabeth Acevedo's work, and I will no doubt pick this one back up again soon!!

Poetry is not a writing style that I usually go for, but in this case I found its use to be an incredible way of telling the story. Xiomara’s story is heartbreaking and inspiring, and I found this book to be an intensely emotional and enjoyable read.

Absolutely adored this book. Perfect use of verse – there was no other way that this story could have been told, and telling a story about a poet in verse is genius.

Explores the importance of music in teen relationships, an aspect which is quite often overlooked but does have a huge part of the way that people bond at a young age and find common ground between each other despite different backgrounds and personalities.

Also explores the conflict between parental beliefs and expectations and your own personal interests, and the way that that can often come to a head in a rather explosive way. I challenge you not to get emotional during one scene in particular between the main character and her mother. Was welling up with tears while reading.

This is the first book I have read in verse so I borrowed it from the physical copy in the library when It became available to me but I will in the future sometimes by my own copy as I really enjoyed it. I love Xiomara as a character and how strong willed and determined she come once she joins the slam poerty group and finally feels free. I love the family aspect and how strongly she feels of them, especially to her brother which I loved as I love reading about sibling relationships especially those of twins.
The plot is very fast paced but then I felt that it needed to be and kept up well with it being a book of verse. There are also a few trigger warnings for this book but I felt that these subjects were dealt with in a respectable manor. These are: slut-shaming, body-shaming, homophobia, parental abuse, bigotry.
I gave this book 4 stars as being the first verse book I have read I didn't have anything to compare it too to make it a 5 star.

Absolutely loved this book. Loved the style, the characters, the story. Definitely recommend. Couldn’t put it down.

Honestly, this book actually blew me away! I didn't expect to enjoy it as I did - I've never really read anything in prose and so I didn't know what to expect! But I think it's important that there are more #ownvoices books in the world, that open up reading to a broader range of themes and a more diverse spectrum of characters. This is one of those special books that focuses on Hispanic culture through the voice of main POV Xiomara, and addresses race, religion, sexuality, LGBT+ issues, family and love.

The prose was a really unique and exciting way of telling this story. There was still a discernible plot for sure, but the whole thing read as spoken word poetry does and I found it to be so beautiful! Poetry is something I struggle to read sometimes so I really enjoyed this use of it. I loved the characters too - Xiomara was just the kind of MC I could get on board with! She didn't make reckless, stupid decisions for no reasons, but had a feisty, likeable personality too. I also loved her twin brother - meeker, but just as great to read, and her mother who was strong in her own way, but also an interesting 'villain' for the story. Characters who seem to love religion more than anything else are always fascinating for me.

I will say that this book seems to end quickly. The prose style helped me to get through it, but the conclusion to the story felt a little TOO happy considering the build-up. I love a happy ending, but I think this one needed to feel a little less rushed and a little more 'happiness in progress'. Also - I would have LOVED to actually read the poems that Xiomara said out loud in her performances! I loved this book though and will definitely be looking into more on Acevedo's work!

The Poet X is a book that has received critical acclaim since and before it's release and I was eagerly waiting to read it. The Poet X definitely lives up to the hype, being a raw and great debut that everyone has to read at least once.

I have read and loved verse novels in the past so when everyone was raving over this book I was excited to jump on the train and read. I think that for me it did take a little while to get into the story but when I was there, I was completely sucked in.

I think that Xiomara is a character that is fleshed out which is a verse novel is so hard to do and Elizabeth Acevedo does this so well considering that it is a debut novel. I think that through the novel, you feel Xiomara as a character and spend most of the book rooting for her the whole way through. Her parents are not the best in the world and you are just rooting for her to get out of the situation.

I also felt connected to her in ways that she sees her body as these were feelings that I had now and that I definitely felt growing up but maybe not to the extent that she felt in the book. There are so many views that Elizabeth Acevedo gets through so clearly that her words are so powerful and jump off the page. Basically, if you had not read The Poet X then I recommend that you pick it up. It is YA at it's best.

The Verdict:

The Poet X is an excellent verse novel that encapsulates the feelings of growing up. It is a must-read.

This was a speedy read; I finished it in just two days! It reminded me a lot of On the Come Up by Angie Thomas, with its themes of a black girl striving for her independence and her voice, and I loved that. In comparison though, this book felt somewhat weaker, especially as the author herself is a performance poet - why in a verse novel, do we never get to read/hear the poems Xiomara actually performs? One of the things I really loved about On the Come Up was seeing the thought processes that created the MC's performances, her rhymes and inspirations, her voice breaking out. While this book is pure poetry, it doesn't break out of the book in the same way - I didn't feel the experience, and that's a shame as I know the author herself is a performance poet and is totally capable of writing that. A missed opportunity, really. What I really did like about this book though was the exploration of Xiomara's struggles with her religious background and the pressures of her family, and her character development through those experiences.

[Apologies in the delayed review. I ended up buying a copy of the finished book on which I base this review]

Xiomara (See-yo-ma-ra) is Dominican American with a very protective mother who is devoted to the Church and wants Xiomara to be a good pious girl. This here sums up why this story felt like part of my story. I am an ethnic minority in a Western white country with parents devoted to their faith and culture and heritage and wish for me to also follow in those footsteps. I get it, parents want their children to be good people, protected, safe, and for religious parents they also wish their children to be connected to faith with the ultimate destination being Heaven. Only like Xiomara, I want something different to what my parents want of me. And that conflict makes this a heartbreaking read.

Xiomara is aware. She is aware of her body, how it has desires, yet how she is viewed as a piece of meat. She has personas: the hard girl you don’t mess with who talks with her fists, the good daughter, the teenage girl who wants romance, the poet in her who wants her voice to be heard. She knows what the community whisper about her dad and has a non-existent relationship with her dad. She sees the inequality between the treatment of her and her twin brother, yet knows that this is a battle she won’t win. She is very aware of how wanting to discover her identity and explore outside the confines of her family’s rigid boundaries will be upsetting to her mother.

But her mum is more than a parent wanting to protect her child. Her mum is controlling, wanting to stifle Xiomara and mould her to her own wants and wishes. Xiomara has her own thoughts of her mother living through her, her mother’s failed dreams being expected of Xiomara. Sadly there is violence in this book, and Acevedo doesn’t shy away from it. Violence exists in every society, and just as Xiomara has friends who are also Dominican and religious and come from loving homes, Acevedo focuses on how control and abuse can exist through limitations of freedom, limitations of expression, and through physical violence and fear.

Xiomara finds a release in her spoken word poetry, but when her mum finds out, her mum does not like Xiomara being independent with all her own thoughts. At one point the word ‘machete’ is used and I am glad Acevedo said it, because although it was not a literal machete (I don’t think), honour based violence/ honour killings exist.

Xiomara is just a 15 year old trying to navigate hormones, changing body, changing feelings, unwanted attention, the way society views her, sexual harassment, interpersonal relationships, finding her own voice, yet she also has to deal with a dysfunctional family and an abusive home.

But as powerful and needed as this story was, I felt the ending was too neat. A pretty little bow on it all. I could understand her mum coming to terms with her poetry, but her mum accepting liaisons of any sort with a male? I wasn’t too sure about that. And I loved that Xiomara used the faith leader to help negotiate between her and her mum.

I really wish I could listen to this on audio. It would make it come alive as I couldn’t pace the verse in my head very well at times.

I also really wish I had this book as a child.

We need more representation of ethinic minorities, different cultures, stifling parents, and abuse in all it’s forms – the restrictions of freedom and expression in particular. Xiomara isn’t a bad person, but she will grow up feeling like there is something wrong with her for not being able to meet her mother’s impossible standards. I think we all have a little of Xiomara in us.

https://kindkonfetti.home.blog/ -- to be published 12 June 2019
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2831549554?book_show_action=false

A powerful and moving novel told in verse. The Poet X took my breath away. I desperately want to read more from Acevedo.

I received a copy from Netgalley.

When I initially requested this one I didn’t realise it was a novel in verse. I normally don’t like novels in verse at all. I’ve never been a poetry person at all, really. The only novel in verse I have read I didn’t like much.

That being said, however, this book just blew me away. I completely loved it. It took a bit of getting used to the style of the poems. Every page more or less had its own poem, and those poems told the story. The words were just so…incredibly powerful. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Xiomara’s voice was just amazing. I can’t even begin to relate to Xiomara’s circumstances, but her words were just mesmerizing. Her mother is a deeply religious woman who seems to want Xiomara to follow in those footsteps. In her parent’s eyes X’s twin brother Xavier can do no wrong. He’s smart and goes to a special smart kid school different from X’s high school. X’s only friend seems to be her church buddy Caridad whom she has known forever. Forced by mom into taking confirmation classes at church X isn’t really into it. She starts to have questions.

She’s not allowed to date, and because of how she looks she often gets picked on by boys and has become very tough in defending herself. Yet when she’s paired with a boy in her bio class she starts to notice things about him, they have similar tastes in music and start to get closer and bond. Into a more than friendship thing.

Which she knows if she gets caught will raise hell with her mother. Her struggles with her desire for the boy and fear of her mother echo in her poetry. She wants to do normal things and doesn’t think kissing a boy is wrong. It’s not. But her upbringing tells her differently.

And then her English teacher mentions a poetry club. She’s noticed X has promise in her writing. But poetry club clashes with confirmation class. X rarely shows her poems to anyone. (Her poems are awesome! I can’t say enough times how much I loved the pure, raw power of this girl’s voice).

Of course before long things go wrong. And it’s just heart breaking. After everything this girl goes though, at one point she just stops talking to everyone she knows when her trust is betrayed. I felt so bad for her. I just wanted things to get better. The pain in her silence comes through in such anguish. Yet she gets the chance, finally, to make her voice heard, and it’s just wonderful.

There’s so much emotion packed into this book, the characters. It’s just such an amazing story. There are not enough ways I can say how much I loved this novel.

Thank you to Netgalley and Egmont Publishing for approving my request to view the title.