Everything you could want in a poetry collection. The author pours his heart into the pages and connects with readers in a way that a lot of first-time poetry writers miss.

He manages to hit all the emotional beats necessary in a concise and relatable way, without needlessly rambling or embellishing. The prose seems effortless in all the right ways.

Beautifully written.

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

Abraham Rodriguez, an actor, decided to write a book of poetry about love, heartbreak and healing. Rodriguez writes openly about a relationship that caused him a lot of pain. I commend him for it. Sadly, I didn't enjoy this collection at all. I could say it was easy to read but it wasn't. There is no punctuation or capitol letters in any of the pieces which made me stumble constantly on how the poems were supposed to be read. Each poem is almost the same just said differently. They are vague with no real way for the reader to connect to them at all. Most pieces are barely a sentence. There are some pieces in Spanish but even translated they are as vapid and generic as the rest.

Before starting the book I noticed the Netgalley and Goodreads reviews where mainly negative and only 10% in I completely agreed. This isn't what I would count as poetry.

3+ stars

This book was an emotional, personal exploration of past experiences, relationships, and feelings. It really wasn’t my style, but it’s hard to judge something that so clearly came from the heart. There were some fairly captivating photos included, a few poems had memorable word choices, and the dual-language (Spanish-English) pieces were interesting. It wasn’t really my preferred type of work, but I’m sure there’s an audience out there for it.

I usually gravitate towards the love and longing themes in poetry, but I couldn't connect with this collection. I did enjoy the way the poetry blended with the photography. Overall the lines felt very generic and more like general statements than any form of poetry.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Mixed Feelings may have come to a moment were you could feel that there is something wrong. I did not hate this collection but somewhat it is repetitive and I feel like it could have done better. However, the photography within the collection is also a good experiment to stir the poems.

2/5

Lovesick. I would use this word to describe this collection because that’s all it is. And there’s nothing wrong with being lovesick or writing about these feelings, but in a collection of poetry I expected more depth and more themes. But it was just that. Lovesick.

It was beautifully written, just written to exhaustion. It was nice to read the first part when everything was new, but by part two is just became the same feelings reiterated over and over.

Photography was beautiful and matched the surrounding poetry really well. I actually preferred the photography towards the end as it was something new to the palate.

I liked that in part four there was kind of a breakthrough, and the monotony kind of changed. The format even changed which helped breathe some life into the collection.

Note that I am not a poet and in no way an expert at reading poetry, but overall I feel that if you’ve read part 1 of this book, you’ve read it all.

Mixed Feelings by Abraham Rodriguez was a tense, emotional collection of poems that were punctuated with stirring photos. This book expressed the difficulties of an on-again off-again relationship and the baby steps it takes to recover from a breakup. As the author found himself his voice became more confident and his emotions more clear. I enjoyed the progression of the poems and I'm sure they will be therapeutic for anyone experiencing heartbreak.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Mixed Feelings is an incredibly easy to read, short poetry collection, centred around one failed relationship the author has had and all the heartbreak that comes with it. Generally, I felt the style of the writing was nice, it wasn't amazing and heart-wrenching but it painted a picture of the general sorrow the writer was going through and it flowed nicely. However, I think the poems (and the book in general) were all greatly lacking in details. Details would provide intimacy, give a sense of realness to your poetry, and really give the feeling that is it all, truly, coming from the heart. That's not necessarily the case when one of your poems (for example) is just this:

"my favorite times were spent with you
i hope they are your favorite too"

Like ... this is fine, it's cute and it could work nicely as the final two lines in a much longer poem but, on it's own, it's not giving my anything to really hook myself to sadly. The poems I did enjoy more than the others were the longer ones that specified one particular memory and actually helped me learn more about the poet and, as a result, relate with them a bit more.

Overall, I think this was just way too "short" of a poetry collection, not in terms of pages but in terms of how much content was actually in the book. I think the poet needed a year more of writing in order to fully flesh out and achieve the potential that's actually apparent on the page. It's certainly not a bad book but unfortunately, it's not a book I'll be remembering or raving about come tomorrow.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.
I enjoyed the mixture of written word and images. It made for an interesting read but I felt like the actual poetry was quite mediocre.

Poetry is hard to review as not everyone will like the same thing. I feel like this just wasn’t for me.

An interesting and emotive collection of modern poetry - illustrated with photography and dual-language prose between Spanish and English to create something very unique.

Rodriguez uses 'Mixed Feelings' to explore the natural journey of love, loss and healing and reflect inwards on his own confusing feelings. There is an obvious fragility and vulnerability to the prose that is easy to connect with and very compelling. However, I too, have mixed feelings about this as it contains the kinds of poems that are a simple statement of a few words and in that popular very post-modern classic but just aren't my style of poetry - however it will definitely attract many poetry lovers.

i thoroughly enjoyed reading this poetry book, i found the writing to be beautiful and brutally honest. i could feel the emotions coming from each poem, it was written in a way that made it feel so emotional and raw, yet also had me sympathising for the poet. i enjoyed how certain poems were written in spanish first, with the english translation following, i felt that this added to the originality of the book whilst also paying tribute to spanish poetry! this poetry collection definitely has the power to make you feel certain emotions, and i’m very grateful to netgally, Abraham Rodriguez and publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this before the release date!

Poetry is difficult to review. Poetry is emotion put to the page. How do you judge how someone expresses emotion? In the end, you don’t. Well, I don’t. I am not a poet, nor am I fully versed on the intricacies of poetry, so I don’t rate on a technical level. Poetry is as good as the emotion it elicits.

Unfortunately the emotions this collection of poetry elicits from me are mostly cringe. I try to find something positive to say about every book that I review, especially when I’ve received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for that review, but this one is proving to be a challenge. Rodriguez pours his heart out on the page in the form of poems and photos much like the example above. The poetry is reminiscent the words scrawled in a teenager’s journal with me + you scrawled in the margins over and over again. It brings up memories of scrolling through my LiveJournal feed back in the day. There are black and white photos throughout the collection, most are of a young man doing couple things on his own. Grabbing his own belt loop. Clawing at his own back. Photos of oranges. Squeezing them, biting them, gnawing on strips of peel. The whole thing is amateurish and unrefined.

But you know what, Rodriguez really put himself out there and that is admirable. The only way to get good at something is to be bad at something and keep doing it until you hit your stride. This is his first book and it does hold little glimmers of potential.

There are a couple instances where he takes a poem and writes it in English and Spanish in opposite directions. It is a format I find myself drawn to, even if the poem itself is not great. I am not fluent enough in Spanish to recognize if it is more impactful in Spanish. These dual lingual poems are my favorites of this book.

All that said, it feels like that first heartbreak when your emotions are all over the place because you haven’t learned how to cope yet.

⭐️⭐️. It’s okay. There is an audience for this, but I’m not it.

Literally the worst "poetry" I've ever read. Half of the poems were literally the same poem just written differently. Not to mention the poems were really annoying, because the "poet" kept making the same mistakes with the same person. Like if you want to make dumb decisions, fine, but don't make me suffer through reading them written in 8 different variations just because you want to publish a book.

AD/ gifted from Netgalley.

i just wanted to clarify that i have nothing against modern minimalist poetry. however, i don’t think this collection is good on a technical or poetic level. there are no language devices, no deeper meaning, everything felt surface level and ‘shown’ not told

this was just the thought or phrase stated with line breaks, with the occasional photo

i’m all for people using art to work through their trauma, hell, i do the exact same thing, so i don’t mean to disregard or disrespect the author or their motives but i just don’t think this is a good set of poetry. some of these feel like tweets or notes app rants than poems. some were just individual words like

“i don’t know
and that’s okay”

like that was one poem, directly quoted from the collection

‘this is
a review
of this book’

if that sentence i just wrote about is a poem, this is a poetry collection. if not, i don’t know what to tell you.

Raw, real and honest. I can feel the pain through his words. I loved the edition of pictures throughout the book and the way the words were placed on the page. Sometimes words would be upside down which I felt highlighted the mixed emotions and the chaos of the authors thoughts. Didn’t like the portrayal of daddy issues but probably the only negative of the whole book.

This is what I call baby "i" poetry. It's the overuse of i instead of I. The poetry was easy to read, can't deny that. I found that I really dislike poetry without titles. I understand what the author was trying to do in the sense of having these poems in no particular order and making a free flowing collection. But this did not work for me. I found it irritating as. Again, I understand that it is meant to be read that way, but it fell flat for me. This is just another poetry collection to add the the non ending Rupi Kaur phenomenon.

Like the title , i too have mixed feelings about this book , which is about love and heartbreak.
I admit it, i'm not an expert for poetry books but compared to the few i've read, this one seems disjointed and unorganized , first he says how he loves her then he says how she was bad for him but then <i>again</i> he's saying how good it felt the two of them being together . The pictures were unnecessary and the spanish verses with upside-down translations pasted next to them weren't creative (if that was the goal) but rather confusing . This was definitely <b>not it</b> for me but maybe people who went through similar stuff would resonate and love this book more than me ...

Thank you to Netgalley, Ilaria Bernardini and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this book, in exchange for an honest review!

Beautiful poetry and I loved the incorporation of Spanish poetry.

Poetry can be quite challenging to review as it has to articulate stories beautifully in a few words unlike prose. Yet I have mixed feelings for this book. From the writing in itself, I can see how the author bared his pain in every single page. Furthermore, the simple words he used were relatable and cuts the edge at some point. One of my favorite was this:

“I feel so empty yet I know I’ll find myself in this exact same place again and again”.

The other side, however, is that these words are prevalent and lacking in identity that sets it apart from other titles or poets. Nevertheless, this book is short, easy to empathize with and better to read on a dark, rainy afternoon that would set the mood just right.

Thanks to Netgalley and Central Avenue Publishing for providing me an e-arc for this honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for the E ARC of Mixed Feelings. This book reminded me of my first love, and all the stuff that occurred. The good, the real good, and, the heartbreak that I never thought I would ever get over.