'A Strangely Wrapped Gift' is a modern poetry collection. Juniper talks about same-sex partners, mental health, relationships and more.
It is a very modern form of poetry, in the style of Rupi Kaur or Instagram poets. Unlike most reviewers, I don't think of Instagram poets as worse poets than others. I do find it difficult to connect to one-liners though.
Overall, this wasn't quite what I expected. I did connect to a few of the longer poems. In fact, some I really really liked. Others though, were too short or too personal for me to relate to.
It wasn't the most impressive read I had this year. But I didn't hate it either. I think there's a poem for everyone in this. Maybe you like the short and concise poems. Maybe you're like me and will fall for the longer ones. Maybe one of the topics or sentiments will just speak to you enough to move you.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I had really high hopes for this collection. While this is the first content I have read from Byrnes, I absolutely jumped at the chance to pick up a poetry book that discussed living with mental health.

But I'll be honest, I was let down. This collection just didn't feel like it had a lot of thought or craft put into it.

I am not someone who disregards modern poetry, because it "sounds like a Tumblr post" (I was personally a reckoning on Tumblr), however this collection just didn't elicit any of the emotion that I would have expected from a topic so close to home.

Overall, I think this reads a lot like an unedited journal-entry, style of prose. But even in saying that - it just felt too muted and dialed back for something written off the cuff.

Maybe it will work for someone else, but not for me.

If you enjoy short poetry which has a strong message but not too much reading between the lines, then you will probably really enjoy this. A Strangely Wrapped Gift is very much an Instagram poetry collection - lots of very short (often one line) poems. This isn't to say they are poor or have limited impact, I think their impact is very much proportionate to the experiences of the reader and quite often their romances, but there isn't very much to them. I guess it's really a matter of taste.

I prefer to read poetry with subtle delivery; stories which I can pick through and decide what they mean to me. That's really difficult to do with poetry like this and often I find that the one liners are designed to be a blunt, sometimes vengeful, approach which doesn't always work for me. I'm just the wrong audience for this collection.

I did enjoy some of the slightly longer poems, particularly those which challenged the media we are presented with, Disney for example, and the message it sends (often incorrectly) to young girls. I also liked that the author tried on a number of occasions to address something we're probably all guilty of - looking the other way instead of facing a truth we wish we didn't know about the world; she does this so well with the meat industry. It might be easier to pretend we don't know where our food comes from, but it certainly forms part of the problem.

I think the poems show so much potential, I just wish she had delivered a collection with more substantial poetry within so that it really showcased her talent.

ARC provided free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A beautiful poetry collection including poems on mental illness, heartbreak, amongst others. I especially loved how the book was separated into the four seasons.

The poem themselves were beautifully written and I could tell that passion and emotion had been challenged into each poem. However, I wasn’t a fan of the title being at the end of the poems, it felt disjointing which in turn caused me to struggle with the flow. Apart from that I really enjoyed this book and I would check out more of this authors work.

"A Strangely Wrapped Gift" is a collection of what most would call "instagram poetry" about love, life, and mental illness. The book fell flat due to the lack of basic poetic tools that could have created some imagery and life but instead felt repetitive and banal. The more personal poems on OCD were obviously written from heart and have merit while others preaching feminism and social justice felt overdone and forced. Two poems "Bliss" and "My Fault" had such an overabundance of trying to be "The Woke White Person" that I was uncomfortable reading them.

Some poems such as "1 AM", "Autumn", and "On Mental Illness" boasted colorful imagery, heartfelt words, and rich tones that I WISHED the rest of this book did.

I didn't realize when I requested this book that the poet is an Instagram poet. I'm not really a fan of that style or of poets like Atticus who post short poems about loving yourself or sadness or not giving up (or how beautiful and magnificent some woman is, that's another popular trope) without really using much in the way of metaphor or other poetic tools. This is also another book that puts the title in parentheses at the end of each poem, which I find kind of gimmicky and really annoying for some reason.

For IG poetry, this was one of the better ones I've read. There were a few poems I did like. One example:

He wanted a taste of my sweet core
without putting in any work.

But you know what they say;
no worker bees, no fruit.

(DRONE)

For the most part,though, most of the poems struck me as pretty basic and predictable. An example:

I don't want someone
to put me back together;
I want someone to
love my pieces,
even the jaged ones.

(PIECES)

It's a nice collection, though, one that many women are likely to relate to. It's also very encouraging at times with poems about not committing suicide and the reader's worth. It's likely to be well liked by many folks, especially younger readers.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.