Reviews

I've had Cynthia Pelayo's books on my TBR for quite some time and have been especially interested in her poetry, so I was incredibly excited to read Crime Scene, especially once I learned it was more of a story in verse than a collection of poems (while I love the latter, the former is one of my favorite methods of storytelling!).

I was immediately taken in not only by how clever and unique Cynthia's ways of phrasing things can be, but also by how necessary her viewpoint on true crime feels. I enjoy true crime books and documentaries as much as many others do, but there's certainly something to be said for the way true crime consumers can take things too far, even exploiting the victims' memories and glorifying the killers at times. Crime Scene shines a light on that problem, in a way, as it exposes the ugly underbelly of crime work by showing us Agent K's ghosts and personal demons that have arisen from her work investigating these murdered victims.

I immensely enjoyed the premise of Crime Scene, but I'll be totally honest: I didn't "get" some of the entries. Something about the flow of thought processes was at times too abstract for my brain to latch onto, but even with that said, I still found myself unable to put it down. I think it's going to hit home with so many readers and I highly recommend picking up a copy, especially if you enjoy horror poetry or poetry with heavy, dark themes like this. And of course, I can't wait to read more from Cynthia soon!

Thank you to the publisher for the review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.

Content Warnings

inkychaotics's review

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dark reflective

5.0

bookish_spren's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

5.0

stranger_sights's review

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Content Warnings

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