Unlock Your Storybook Heart by Amanda Lovelace: ARC & Series Review

^{This is a spoiler-free review.}

Unlock Your Storybook Heart by Amanda Lovelace

^{Expected publication March 15th, 2022 by Andrews McMeel Publishing.}

My rating:

“Life is not something that can be experienced on a deadline.”

Amanda Lovelace, the bestselling & award-winning author of the “Women Are Some Kind of Magic” poetry series, presents unlock your storybook heart, the third & final installment in her feminist poetry series, “You Are Your own Fairy Tale.” This is a collection about being so caught up in the fable that is perfectionism that you miss out on your own life. Be honest: when was the last time you stopped to take in the everyday enchantment all around you?

Content Warnings: abuse, eating disorders, self-harm and suicide

^{Thank you to the publisher, Andrews McMeel Publishing, and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this book. All thoughts are my own.}

As a fan of the previous two installments in this series (you can find my review for them here), I was definitely intrigued when I saw Unlock Your Storybook Heart: the third and final book in the You Are Your Own Fairy Tale series. 📖🗝💕

Not only is Beauty and the Beast one of my favorite fairy tales from my childhood (a bookish princess, hello?), but I myself have dealt with what used to be crippling perfectionism, so I was very invested in this poetry collection from the get-go.

Reading this collection, I couldn’t help becoming completely entranced, and yes, shedding a few tears. 🤧 It was very easy to lose myself in Lovelace’s writing here. And reading her work took me back to the days when my perfectionism was something I really struggled to manage. I also loved the sapphic aspect of this collection (something I don’t think Lovelace has touched on in her previous works?)! Honestly, this poetry book was just a big, bubbling cauldron of everything and anything that gets me in my feelings – and it definitely achieved what it set out to do.

I did go back and forth with how to rate this collection because I honestly really loved it, but I did also find some poems within it disjointed and the flow staggered a little at the beginning. In the end, I think the feelings it invoked within me did deserve their credit, so I erred on the side of more forgiving when rating.

Perhaps it’s my bias – really though, who writes an unbiased book review?! – but Unlock Your Storybook Heart was the right story to conclude this collection with and my absolute favourite one of the bunch. 💓

Have you read this poetry series?

What did you think of it?

Let me know!