howlinglibraries's review
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Everything that dies
returns
and I want that to be as true
for murdered girls
as it is for frogs and salamanders
Donna Lynch absolutely blew me away with her last collection, Choking Back the Devil, so I knew this collection was going to be incredible as well, but I didn't know I could love it this much. I tabbed practically every other page in my copy of Girls From the County because it felt like each and every poem had something in it that was so important, that I needed to let it sink its teeth into me and then mark it for easy future access to return to.
Girls From the County feels like a merging of dark poetry and true crime as it follows stories that we know are true not only from the author's note in the beginning, but also because they're the kinds of stories we're all painfully familiar with, especially women, especially women who grew up in small towns where everyone knows who the devil on their street is, but nobody's willing to exorcise him.
Donna Lynch is my favorite modern poet and I genuinely cannot recommend this collection highly enough. Her work always leaves me both raw and starstruck in the best possible ways.
Thank you to the publisher for the review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual assault, Addiction, Suicide, Mental illness, and Murder
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