Themes: Love, heartbreak, emotional vulnerability, self-discovery, healing.

Summary:
A raw, emotional journey through love’s rise and fall, this poetry collection traces heartbreak and the slow, steady work of healing and rediscovering self-worth.

Review:
This collection captures the messy beauty of love and loss with sincerity and heart. The emotional arc—from passion to heartbreak to healing—is relatable and honest, though uneven at times. Some poems cut deep, while others feel more like fleeting thoughts. A solid 3-star read for those drawn to introspective, relationship-centered poetry.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book!

Honestly, it was quite boring. Cute illustrations, but those were also very basic.

Raw, Honest, and Beautifully Healing

Breathing in Broken Spaces is the kind of book that sits with you long after you close it—a quiet companion for anyone who’s ever felt fractured by life and is trying to find their way back to themselves. Belinda Daou writes with a tenderness that feels like a gentle hand on your shoulder, reminding you that you’re not alone in the hard, messy parts of being human. This book doesn’t shy away from darkness—it steps right into it. But what makes it so special is how Daou finds moments of light within that darkness: a spark of hope, a breath of resilience, a reminder that healing isn’t linear and that it’s okay to exist in broken spaces for a while.

Her writing is raw yet lyrical—like a whispered confession or a journal you find tucked away in a drawer. I often found myself rereading lines, underlining passages that felt like they were written just for me. It’s a book you can open to any page and find something true. Breathing in Broken Spaces is for anyone who’s been cracked open by grief, loss, love, or simply life itself. It’s not about pretending everything’s okay—it’s about honoring the cracks, the scars, and the beauty that can grow in unexpected places. If you need a reminder that your broken pieces don’t make you less worthy—that in fact they make you more deeply, beautifully human—this book will feel like a balm for your soul. I’m so grateful it exists.

Breathing in Broken Spaces delves into the rawest corners of heartbreak, trauma, and survival. It's deeply personal and honest, these poems capture pain and resilience in ways that are both powerful and relatable. A moving read for anyone.

This book...I struggle to find words how to describe it! What first drew me to it, is the beautiful cover. This is a book you'd want on your shelf! And somehow, the author manages to make the inside of the book equally beautiful.

This poetry collection is raw, emotional, lyrical and heartbreaking. Read with caution if you've recently gone through a heartbreak, but also...read it!

This poetry book truly has you feeling all of the emotions. You can tell it is written from the heart and from the authors experiences, it is deep, meaningful and everything you need from a poetry book. Even if you haven't experienced a break up/heartbreak as most of these poems delve into, I still feel like it is a really relatable poetry book for a lot of people and the poems can be related to other experiences and emotions one is going through. The range of longer and shorter poems was lovely too I always like a mixture of poetry sizes.

A beautiful collection of poetry with some very relatable pieces within that had me thinking about my own life.

This book is written very well!
I loved how relatable the poems are for many people.
It's very raw & personal with I liked.
It might be one of the best poetry books I've read about heartbreaks in a long time.
I will be buying a copy for on my shelf to read through once in a while!

Thank you so much for everyone involved for the arc copy!

Not bad, but not good either. It’s just okay. There was a couple poems I liked, but overall it was kind of ‘meh.’ I don’t think the illustrations do anything for the book either.

Thank you Netgalley, Lines in Emotions Publishing, and Belinda Daou for sending me this advanced review copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This was a deeply emotional experience. There was so much raw pain and emotion, that it was hard to read at times. They flowed one into the next, hitting deeper into your soul with each one. It was amazing, and something that I would read again and again.

This was a beautiful collection of poetry on love and feelings from the time in the relationship and how reflecting on love lost makes you feel.

How so deep into the relationship you can lose who you were as you become a team, a duo, so when that ends how your life can feel so much different to before, after giving that person and relationship your everything to keep the love alive and going.

The poems touch on themes of love to hate, hope to commiserations, endings and beginnings of relationships and the feelings that leaves you dealing with and how broken that relationship can leave you to grieve and heal alone from.

If you are going through a heartbreak and need a book to show you how you feel is valid and others get how you feel in their own circumstances, this collection of poetry is easily one to pick up and find instant relatability in feelings.