Bumpy Oak Books

**I was provided an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for honest review.**

3 stars

Holly Lyn Walrath presents a poetry collection, The Smallest of Bones, discussing a broad variety of topics including relationships, queerness, ghosts, and darkness. NetGalley also chose to classify this work as Horror in addition to Poetry.

I find poetry in particular to be incredibly difficult to review. A reader’s experience with poetry is so incredibly subjective and the composition of poetry is so widely varied that it is hard to point at a poem and differentiate between a “good” or “bad” poem, let alone a “well-written” versus “poorly-written” one. That being said, I will try to present facts as I see them to guide other readers who have interest in this collection.

Walrath’s poetry style is consistent with the short-form “instagram-type” poetry which has been popular in recent years. Some poems may have a few stanzas, and others may have a line or two with deliberate formatting. Walrath also writes in a manner that I perceive as being raw and laying the words bare rather than engaging in a lot of double entendre or wordsmithing. I do not have any particular personal complaints about Walrath’s poetry style.

Each section of the collection was broken up by Walrath addressing a particular bone of the body. These paragraph style installments were most enjoyable to me.

Overall, I didn’t find myself particularly connected to this collection, but that would not prevent me from recommending it to others. I appreciate the content of the collection and wish Walrath much success with its launch.