Love Looks Pretty On You — Lang Leav

TITLE: Love Looks Pretty On You
AUTHOR: Lang Leav
RELEASES: January 29th, 2019; Andrews McMeel Publishing
GENRE: Nonfic/Poetry
AGE RANGE: Adult

And if ever you find my name slipping from your memory, I can promise you, by the time this year is through, you will never forget it again.

Lang Leav was my first contemporary poetry love, and no matter how many collections she releases, I genuinely don’t believe I’ll ever stop adoring them. She always seems to know exactly the right things to say, and when I pick up one of her books, always, it feels like coming home.

Our salvation will only come if we stand together.

Love Looks Pretty on You stands apart from her previous collections in its unapologetic, bold feminist theme, and that made it my favorite yet. Lang takes the time to break down what misogyny has done to women, and how it has encouraged us to tear one another down for our sexuality or even our mere, most human mistakes.

When my best friend told me
she was in love
my first thought was,
‘I hope he is good to her.’
And it suddenly occurred to me,
what I held in my heart for her
was hope, when it should
have been expectation.

There are endless references circling back to abuse and the things women in m/f relationships have come to not only fear, but to expect, and while it’s a tough read at points—or it was for me, as a survivor—it also feels like a tight hug, a fellow warrior saying, “I understand you,” and I didn’t know how much I needed that right now until reading these poems and Lang’s quick flashes of righteous anger and sorrow.

My mother, my safe passage
into this world, fought a war
to show me wars can be won.

Finally, some of the most heartache-inducing moments in the collection are the references to Lang’s mother, which made me take a moment to think of how grateful and blessed I am to never have lived through the struggles of being a refugee. In these moments, it’s easy to see that Lang Leav got her bravery honestly.

Someone who has your heart is not entitled to your body.
No one lays a finger on you without your permission.

I could easily fill page upon page with quotes and my own gushing over this collection, but I’ll stop here and say only that, if you enjoy poignant, powerful, relevant poems from a writer whose work I genuinely believe will go down in history for generations to come, read this.

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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