the bitter end – book review

The Bitter End by Kaliane Faye was a short poetry collection about the feelings of bitterness with a relationship that never had the time to bloom. Correction: it had the time but not the courage. At least, that was my takeaway.

This collection was not for me. The style wasn’t my favorite and I kept longing for more of the story to be told, but because the pieces were so short, everything fell flat. It was like the first handful of chapters were given to you and you had the expectation that the rest would be too, but they never were, so you’re just left with dissatisfaction and a never answered cliffhanger. It sucked, basically. I wanted closure, but it seems like the author didn’t get closure either, so maybe it was a point being made.

I’m not sure I would recommend this book to anyone, unless they were fond of the modern short poetry style, even though there was a handful of things I did enjoy, one being the way some poems connected to each other.

There are no page numbers, but it’s about the tenth and the eleventh poem in. The tenth poems last line says “shitty truth or dare questions” which then brought over and into poem eleven being set up as a truth or dare game. I didn’t really care for the content of the poems, more so I just enjoyed the connection and the formatting, I thought it was nice and clever.

I also did enjoy some poems and their lines, like the one poem featured on the back of the book:

“I’m only bitter because your name sounds better on my tongue than anyone else’s ever did.”

It’s also one of the more longer-ish poems and I actually highlighted the subtitle, too, as it ended with:

“We never stood a fucking chance against the rest of the world – and that’s not fair.”

It was probably my favorite piece from the whole collection, with the way it held subtle desperation and anger to have had what they couldn’t: a relationship, despite knowingly being in love with one another.

Another line I liked, was the ending one to the third poem, “your name… I repeated it… until it felt like home inside my mouth.”

I did give this book a three out of five stars, because as I said, it just wasn’t for me. I’m very intrigued to see and read any future projects Kaliane Faye brings forth; if you take a look at the writing she’s been posting, you can clearly see the growth and improvement. But this collection was lacking, and I probably wouldn’t reread it.