Cynically Sweet (Booklikes)

Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset; Soon a New Day Will Dawn is a book of poetry by Cleo Patra. It includes poems which speak of many varying situations, a lot of which a reader might be able to relate to. My favourite poem within the pages is "Still looking for a substitute-mist." This book being the author's debut work, I think they did a fair job. Many of the poems have a good flow and work well. However, there are cases within the book that just don't seem as well thought out.
For example, the very first poem, "Cupcake flakes". I think that the language usage just seems weird and it doesn't flow as well as some of the others. I think that's primarily due to the rhyming nature of it; the author uses pretty much any rhyme, but not all of them work well for the poem. The same can be said for the book's other poems as well. Another issue is references to varying people, things and companies. Some of the references to popular culture felt out of place. The reason that I mention this is that not everyone might know who these people or organisations are. Sure, most people will know who the popular ones are, examples being Casanova or James Bond. However, some poems make reference to things I don't understand. For example, the line, "Held captive by Seth." Originally, I knew of the Egyptian Seth, but I did an online search to be sure. Not only is there the Egyptian Seth, but there is a bible Seth, and multiple other Seths that the author could mean. Another example is "Ronan Keating". From the passage, I assume that they are a musician or singer of some sort, but I don't think that I've ever heard their work.

Overall, I liked a substantial amount of the work presented. However, I think that some of the author's chosen words are a little weird in some cases; choosing things that will rhyme rather than things that will make sense within the context. But, many of the poems did give me food for thought and I appreciate the opportunity to have read them. I think that the author could do really well, with some improvement. For a first try, I think it was well done.

I received a free copy of this story as a prize from the FirstReads program in exchange for an honest review. This is the link presented from the giveaway email for this book, however my copy has a different cover. I assume that they're still the same, though.