I needed this. Every girl in their 20’s needs this. It’s beautiful and emotion and I wish there was more of it!!

I found this to be quite average. Not my favourite collection of poems but I do think it has appeal for a different generation.

I was given a NetGalley widget for this one a year ago and I just got around to reading it and dangit it was so good. I am so thankful for the opportunity to have consumed this wildly relevant fictional tale, which felt not at all fictional, more like historical fiction, due to the times. The cover initially was what drew me in, but I'm so thankful to have stuck with it because the outcome was magical.

Firstly, I'd like to thank Netgalley and Central Avenue Publishing for the eARC for an honest review.

This poetry collection is a full exploration of grief, heartbreak and love and living fully while immersed in these deeply felt emotions. The many pieces about Caitlin's Grandma were my favourite of the whole collection. Having recently lost my Grandma, which only felt like yesterday but has actually been over 3 years, I felt every word from these poems. The honesty as Caitlin takes us back to that time, the hospital visits, the deterioration, that feeling of wanting to go back and soak up every word, really took me back in time. I felt it all. Caitlin explores grief beautifully.

Caitlin's writing style is beautiful and she has done so well with her debut collection. Her exploration of romantic relationships, from the heartache to finding the one is done really well. I did prefer the poems that focused on the grief that I could relate to on a deeper level but that is just my preference. I think I would have liked the poems more grouped based on topic only because sometimes when the poems about her partner popped up it can be hard to just change gears emotionally which meant the true meaning behind the poem wasn't appreciated. I'm looking forward to more from Caitlin in the future and wish her every success.

This soul-baring collection of poetry took me back to the heartache of my youth. Many themes were touched on, including love, loss, and hope. The varied structure kept my attention from poem to poem.

“your name like my name. Like something I can't remember ever learning, just blinking into existence knowing”

[4.5]
While reading it I found so many feelings and experiences of my own mirrored in these beautifully touching poems. Even though she doesn't shy away from describing the struggles of mental illness, grief, and heartbreak with wonderful metaphors and imagery, the collection leaves you with a hopeful sensation. Pointing out that everyone can heal, even if it seems impossible at the moment.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with the e-arc!

I think is important to write about the ones that we used to love or the ones that we still love, and have in our hearts because that's what makes us stronger. Just like Caitlin Conlon, as the reader that I am, I found myself in the deepest of my consciousness to acknowledge the power that it has to remember what made me the person that I am today. All thanks to reminders for empowerment. I sometimes feel like giving myself up, and this book only made me realize that is ok to feel like that, but to also embrace it, and never give myself up to anything or anyone.

Another wonderful book of poetry I'm so grateful to have gotten early access to. I'll be following Caitlin Conlon in the future for sure. Thank you!

The Surrender Theory is a book filled with beautiful poetry that makes you process emotions. You, like the title suggests, must surrender to your emotions. As someone who has not dealt with much grief in my life, I still found myself completely entranced by Conlon’s writing. I love the different formats of writing through the book as well, it was really cool. Conlon is, and forver shall be in my opinion, a must buy author.

This is a poetry collection I loved reading. I completed reading it in a single day. Riveting and soul piercing, this collection of poems is her here to stay.

i really liked this poetry collection! i read it super fast and found myself screenshotting so many because they really resonated with me. it was very relatable for a 20 year old girl. i would recommend!

This book was hard for me to get through. I appreciate the attempt at vulnerability and expression, but the ways the author reckons with loss and heartbreak just felt a bit overdone and at times veers towards melodrama. In my personal opinion, the tone was a bit too difficult to get past.

I would like to thank the publisher of The Surrender Theory for providing me with an ARC. As someone who has grieved many difficult losses, I always find poetry around grief and death, and all the complicated feelings it brings with it, to be very moving and this wasn't an exception. Personal preference, I'm not a huge fan of the extremely short style of poem at times. I do like a little more to work with when I read poetry, but the language was beautiful and very moving.

I'm not normally one to review poetry, though I do enjoy reading it. I hated having to analyze it in English classes, so trying to put how I felt about it into words feels a lot like that. As someone who is still grieving a pretty serious loss, I can absolutely put myself in the writer's shoes, and to me that is what makes poetry great-- the ability to share emotion through the written word.

I would like to thank the publisher of The Surrender Theory for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy through NetGalley.
This collection of poems is centered around grief.
Grief about the passing of her grandmother, grief about her mental health and how depression is affecting her life, grief after breaking up with someone close to her heart.
Several poems were relatable, especially the ones talking about depression ( "Depression, Revisited", 'The Depression Notes").

This novel was incredibly well-written. I can't emphasize how fantastic it is. The poetry that opened the book drew me in so strongly that I couldn't put it down. I would say more but I am genuinely speechless. Fantastic book and handled the strong topics very well.

I couldn’t read this before bed because the writer captured the pain of grief so well, it made me cry and get too upset to sleep. I don’t believe I’ve read any other poetry that captures the complexity of grief the way Caitlin Conlon does here. There were also moments of joy, of overcoming, and most importantly, of love. I highlighted so many lines to read to my partner that captured the calm moments of serenity and pure synchronicity that are experienced when two people are truly in love with each other. A truly beautiful, complex read with sadness but also hope.

Poetry collections are tricky when you haven't read much of a poet's work. They can either open you to a whole new wonderful world, or they can be really hard to get through.

Unfortunately, Caitlin Conlon's 'The Surrender Theory' was more of the latter than anything else to me.

Dealing with topics like grief, depression and heartache, 'The Surrender Theory' consists of 80-something poems that are largely about the poet's grandmother dying and the men who didn't love her back. Or enough to stay.

The title - and very first - poem, which is the one I had read and loved before I read the collection, stands out head and shoulders above the rest. A few others that I really enjoyed include 'Pareidolia', 'Nesting Doll' and 'After', and while I understand that grief does different things to us all, most of the poems about it were my least favourite of the bunch.

“There isn’t much that scares me more than my own heart, a monster of tenderness. I have an irrational fear that I’ll wake to find it perched at the foot of my bed, begging to be torn apart, consumed in the name of compassion. And that’s incredibly terrifying for a few different reasons but mainly because I’d do it. I’ve never needed an excuse to sacrifice myself for love. I’m a martyr for everything soft. I confess to you: I’d bleed for anything if it held me the right way. I confess: I have. I have.”

Much of the collection feels both formulaic and juvenile, and while there are glimmers of brilliance, a lot of Conlon's work in this collection falls flat to me.

Had I read this 10 years ago, I probably would have been obsessed with it. I too was a sad girl mourning what felt like an insurmountable loss. But now, at 31, 'The Surrender Theory' felt shallow.

“Nowadays I don’t know what to do with my hands. I write. I say your name over and over until it isn’t a word. I sit outside and weep into the daisies until memory becomes less of a burden and more of a fact.”

I love that the poet found love after it all, and the poems to and about her partner are a lovely change of pace in this collection, but after all the death and heartache and sadness, they almost feel... Misplaced.

I probably would have appreciated and enjoyed the collection more if it was shorter, but as it is, it was a "hmmm, no" for me.

“If I could give you one last thing, it would be this: I no longer think of you with yearning, only curiosity.”

The Surrender Theory, Caitlin Conlon. Central Avenue Publishing 2022.
“Memory – little more than obsessive remembering but we feed it like a habit.”
-Caitlin Conlon, "Pantoum for Waiting Rooms", The Surrender Theory (2022)

The Surrender Theory by Catlin Conlon was an absolutely breathtaking debut collection, one that rattled me to my core and enveloped my mind.

It was heartbreaking, heart-wrenching, heartwarming, everything to do with inflicting emotions onto the heart. It stunned me with its detailed imagery, unique references, amazing uses of form and free verse, and beautiful word art that’s featured throughout.

I’m usually picky about poetry, but this one rocked my socks off. It was unique and the poet’s writing really shined through. I am very grateful for being able to read this early and will most likely be getting a physical copy once its released so I can pass it on to people to read.
The imagery of both scenery and emotions gave me vivid play-by-plays in my head and visceral reactions in my heart. On more than one occasion did I gasp, feel my heart drop into my stomach, and watch as the scenes unfolded.

Conlon uses a lot of references, some from Greek myth and some from pop culture. She uses Stephen King's The Shining's Jack and Wendy Torrance as outlets to tell different sides to stories, uses their stories and personalities as a connection to her own. She also uses Narcissus--a Greek figure who, for all eternity, looks at himself in the reflection of a pond--and the reference of his almost lover Echo as references to points in her life where she is mourning something or someone, a relationship or a dead relative, but that pain slowly goes away with the quote,

"Time is erasing you without so much as an echo to commemorate it."
-Caitlin Conlon, "Call Me Narcissus", The Surrender Theory

In "Penelope", she uses Homer's The Odyssey, as the source for her retelling/projection of herself. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, is the outlet for yearning, waiting for years for something to happen, for Odysseus to return home. Conlon's "Penelope" uses Penelope's story as a projection of herself, just waiting for the day someone returns to her, but slowly coming to accept that she might let the person go. It is a melancholic poem of hope and yearning.

Conlon uses many different forms like list poems, odes, pantoums, erasure poems and even utilizes free verse to make other forms like the questionnaire form we see in "Questionnaire", or the voicemail poem, where it mostly backs out what is supposedly said. Her range of form and free verse made it an engaging read; not once did I feel bored reading this collection.

What else makes this collection amazing is the use of handwritten/hand drawn art that is featured throughout the collection. They combine simple drawings or diagrams with meaningful snippets of writing. It ties the collection together, lacing written thoughts and visual expressions together.

I highly recommend this collection to everyone, but trigger warnings, it does mention death, grief, and mental health.

Thank you to NetGalley for the early access e-book!

The Surrender Theory is a collection of poem on grief be it death or heartbreak or just living
I love Ms. Conlon's writing. It's easy yet so deep and reflective because we all go through grief at one point or the other