Love and Misadventure is a short collection of poems illustrating and exploiting both the immaculate beauties and devastating pitfalls that are intertwined in love and loss. The collection of poetry is both a blessing and a curse to read as readers are forced to acknowledge both old and new wounds left behind from their wrongdoers. It is a tale of liquid white lies that readers have all greedily clasped in cupped hands at one point or another, torn between taking an indulgent sip or finally accepting the long lost battle to an even longer lost war. The book itself is the weary line between giving in and giving up.

While poetry may not be for everyone, this book certainly is. The short collection of poems stirs readers in a way that an exhilarating rollercoaster might- filling readers with both a strong sense of weightlessness and freedom while also filling them with a peculiar sense of anxiety and loss that many can empathize with. In any case, Leav manages to affect her audience in such a way that they continue to recover from the impact her words long after flipping the back cover shut. In Lang’s 155 pages she manages to sail into the uncharted territory of not only the inexplicable disaster that is the teenage psyche, but also that of a nostalgic adult. Through her frustratingly short poems she manages to flesh out the idea that true love, while not always perfect, will ultimately triumph in the end- which may or may not be the most beautiful lie we have. She brings the skeletons of words readers never dared let crawl past their sewn lips to life and makes them dance a merry and mournful dance and colors in the sketches of thoughts readers have formed in their minds with a unique fluidity and flourish one might only hope of one day imitating. In short, Lang Leav’s short collection of poems is a beautiful mixture of heartbreak and wistfulness that will both awe and perturb readers.