Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a decent set of poems but I didn’t love it. I find it can be hard to rate and critique poetry because it is so personal. This was just okay for me. I enjoyed it but it didn’t love it.

A thoughtful exploration of American Midwesternism, queer grief, and the crisis of existing in a violent and indifferent country. The first part focuses on gun violence, the second on violence against queer women, and the third an exploration in space. My favorite poems included: Stone (Butch), Tanager Street, A Study in Plants, Nature Poem, Untraceable.

Sarah M. Sala has a clear voice thought out these poems. I enjoyed reading these poems and provide a snapshot to different parts of their life and views on certain topics.
Sala explores love and gender and what it means. “Gender isn’t something on is, but performs”.
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review,

This is a book of poems: poems I understood, peoms I didn't, poems that made me give a strange look and poems that made me stare at a wall. Rating this book was difficult because I have mixed feelings. On the surface, I can't see any change this book did to me. But deep down, I know it's activated a cold volcano. The words used really worked out in some poems but some of them seemed way too personal and as a reader, they just came to me as something that wasn't meant for me. But I actually liked it because even though the poems didn't feel like they were written for the reader, I still took away something from them. I refuse to believe that the author didn't do this intentionally. For someone who rarely reads and enjoys poetry, Devil's Lake was a good book.

I received this book on NetGalley, and I didn't really know what to expect. I enjoyed the poetry and the way the author told layered stories through them some of the poems hit harder than others, and overall, it was okay. Nothing necessarily wrong with this book, but poetry has to consistently resonate with me for me to truly enjoy it fully.

I really enjoyed this poetry collection. Full transparency, I'm a poetry snob and super picky about poetry I read. Going into "Devil's Lake" I knew nothing and didn't know what to expect but what I got was so much more than what I could have expected. Sala does an amazing job composing complex, storytelling poems that need a few reads to fully understand that many layers and the depth in each piece. I am a huge fan of the many different styles used throughout the book, it kept the reading experience fresh. The poems were raw, emotional, complex, and queer. I truly enjoyed this collection and I want to add a physical copy to my collection asap!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tolsun Books for providing me with an e-arc "Devil's Lake" by Sarah M. Sala in exchange for an honest review.

Sadly, I really didn't get on well with this collection. I could absolutely tell that they were important poems, covering challenging topics - I'm always especially glad to read queer literature. However I found the writing really tricky to engage with. I felt my understanding of the poetry was limited, which really distanced me from the meaning and effect in each poem. I'm so sad that it felt like the poetry was landing on deaf ears, as it deserves an understanding reader and for some reason I couldn't provide that.

However, I did particularly enjoy the blanked out letter poems - a brilliantly interesting and engaging conceptual form that pulled me in immediately as I desperately wanted to piece together what might be hidden behind each black block - and I loved what was made out of the remaining words.

Powerful raw and real life problem poems. Highly recommend. Quick read. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I think that I misread the description because I had no idea that this was a book of poems. Some of the poems were well written, some touched me, and some were hard for me to understand. This is why I gave it 3 stars.

This collection had many amazing poems, though some just didn't quite connect with me. I found the formatting of some of these poems interesting and effective. Great collection!

2/5 stars. This poetry collection was not particularly bad, but it wasn’t all that good either. The writing was a bit hard to connect with and/or understand. The poetry was centered around the lgbtqia+ community and just being queer in general though which I thought was amazing.

This collection of poems provided a wide range of approaches to looking at a variety of subjects, including but not limited to: queerness, womanhood, nature, and love. Overall, it was an interesting blend of information in a nice style of poetry, but nothing which I read was particularly profound, and it didn’t leave a huge impact on me as most poetry typically does. I did really enjoy the use of science as a perspective, and it was a wonderful, quick, read, but there are also major content warnings necessary, and I did not end up connecting with the message of any of the poems themselves.

This collection of poems delves into what it is to be human, now, in the wreckage of what we built in turns brutal, beautiful, and expansive. These poems hit their brightest, most lyrical stride when they reach into the cosmos for both metaphor and reflection. That said, the line that will resonate for awhile, from a poem about connection lost, the shape of space between us, from the poem Untraceable: “I wish a thousand kindnesses in you. Untraceable, back to me.”

Formatting issues (I could only read it through the Adobe app, couldn't enlarge the type, and many words overlapped such that they were difficult to read) affected my ability to immerse in the poems. That said, I'm not sure better formatting would have made for a more enjoyable read. The images were repetitive, most of the poems lacked the musical quality that typically makes reading poetry pleasurable, and the author's point of view didn't feel particularly special or interesting. Overall, it was fine. 2.5 stars.

Devil's Lake is an incredible short poetry book full of powerful and moving work. With a heavy emphasis on female/female relationships and queerness, this is a poetry book that will find a place amongst the lesbian poetry greats. This poetry book is about more than lady love through, it deals with a variety of concepts including gun violence. The poems are raw, real, and very relevant to today.

I did not really like this collection, I think it had some alright poems but none of them really connected with me and some of them just absoletly made no sense. I didn't like the poems that had to be read by me turning my phone I felt that to be super annoying. I dreaded getting through the last few pages.

Thank you Netgalley for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange of an honest review.

This is a book that is kind of hard to follow. I struggled to do so. It had science references at moments and hard words that i didn't understand being English my second language. After i got comfortable with the author's writing style and had opened a dictionary it went smoother but still its really hard to understand some of the poems so beware when you start reading the book that you need to be familiar with poetry.

I am gonna be honest and say that there were poems i did not enjoy. However, some of them made me cry. The topics vary from science to sexuality to harsher themes such as shootings and an attack agiants two girls that left one of them dead.

I did enjoy the book but i wasn't ready for the difficulty it had so i didn't enjoy it as much as i could. Still, iw ould highly recommend it to people qho like poetry, it is worth it i swear.


Trigger Warnings: murder, homophobia, animal abuse, shootings, hate crimes.


3,75

There were a handful of poems I enjoyed from this book, but it left no lasting impact overall. I'm fairly new to the world of poetry, so it could be that this collection just isn't for me, but there was nothing that resonated very strongly in this. "Nature Poem" and the letter erasures were both the most creative and my favorite works from this book, and I didn't mind the variety of form throughout. Sala's style is pared back and concrete, and her collection reads at times like a memoir. I gave this 3/5 stars.

This poetry book was so unique. I think this is the first time I've seen a key smash used as a poem method and actually enjoyed the result. the poems were blunt and brute and I loved that about them. I always love when a collection explores queer identities, and this one definitely delivered. I enjoyed this so much!