A flagged review...
I tried posting a review on the Zon, and it was flagged as inappropriate because I told the truth???
Yeah, you heard it right, I tried posting a review on Amazon, and it was flagged as inappropriate. Which, honestly, told me everything I/we need to know about why a book needs to be talked about more. So here I am, bringing it to a space that (hopefully) lets women speak, feel, and exist freely.
The book I'm talking about is Wilting Hope by Marie F. Crow.
Okay, first of all… damn. After the very first poem? I literally ran—to the author, to the PR company's DMs—because how could I not? To write something this sharp, this intimate, this painfully relatable right from the start… it felt like being understood without having to explain a single thing. So yes, thank you to the author for writing these words and presenting it to the world, and to the PR company (Literary Loft) for having me on the book tour—because it is exactly the kind of work that deserves to be read, shared, and talked about.
I might have talked about books that lingered too much, but this gave me a felling like as if pressing into my ribs and just refusing to leave and honestly—I feel grateful for it. There was an unsettling feeling that had been stagnant for a while, just staying within me ready to swirl up again, but reading words from the poems of Wilting Hope have just taken out the feeling with power… power to overcome it.
Overcome things I've seen too clearly and still wasn’t ready to look away.
There's no polite talk, and definitely doesn’t soften to be easy in every poem. It gives the cold, hard truth that dared me to sit with it. Topics like seduction are no longer just performance to be seen or experienced by just one individual, and Rage caused by frustration and unsaid feeling doesn't need apologies later on just because we harbor feelings like a normal human being, a woman at most.
What stayed with me the most is this repeat sense of love—it's not neat, neither consumable kind, but something that almost reincarnated. A love that returns again and again, not because it’s perfect or anything, but because it’s unfinished, unsaid, and never given chance to talk about. Because every time, it feels different. Every time, it asks something new of you, new expectations. No emotion repeats itself exactly the same, and Wilting Hope makes us understand that deeply.
And then there’s a very different way desire is said or approached by Marie F. Crow.
We live in a world that still treats $ex quiet shameful (atleast that's what I think with the conversations I had with some people regarding these topics), something to either hide or reduce into something casual and careless. Like Netflix and Chill, that destroyed the actual meaning and feeling of being intimate. But these poems refuse both. They don’t try to dilute it, into something digestible, nor do they cover it in euphemism (Euphemism: /ˈjuːfɪmɪz(ə)m/ a mild, polite, or indirect word or phrase used to replace one that is considered too harsh, blunt, unpleasant, or embarrassing). Instead, we get to hold it—firmly, honestly—and ask: what happens if we stop pretending?
We forget that there’s a rawness to it. A hunger. Not just physical, but emotional, almost feral in the way it reaches, wants… wants to takes up space. The kind of desire that isn’t just about touch, but about being fully felt, fully immersed. And reading it as a woman, written for women, by a women, I realize how rare it is to see that kind of honesty without it being filtered, softened, or reshaped to fit someone else’s comfort.
Wilting Hope feels like a diary that was never meant to be read—and yet, here we are. Sitting with it's unsaid pain, it's uncontrollable power, it's quiet uncomfortable confessions and it's bitter loud truths. There are things, that don’t translate easily into polite conversation, and maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe some things are meant to be experienced rather than explained to someone who doesn't quite understand me.
At the end, I could just say read it to feel emotions in a different way. But honestly if you’re looking for something gentle, this isn’t it.
But if you want something that doesn’t lie to you—something that strips things down to their pure rawest form and lets you feel every bit of it—then you’ll definitely find something in Wilting Hope.
And maybe, like me, you won’t walk away unchanged.
– H 🐝
Finally Out of Posting Slump… Hopefully I post here as I intended to.
You can check out more about MARIE F. CROW books and if you're an author looking for an amazing PR Company do get in touch with LITERARY LOFT PR for any book promotions, ARC management and quite a lot more. Trust me they'll never let you down.