e-ALC, 09:46:42
Narrated by: Shahjehan Khan & Joniece Abbott-Pratt
Release Date: March 24, 2026
Published by: Books On Tape
Read from: March 23-24, 2026
Stand-alone
Source: PRH Audio App (I received this ALC free from the 0publisher and their app. This did nothing to influence my review!)
Content Warning: Addiction, Bullying, Pregnancy, Death of a Parent, Panic Attacks/Disorders, Violence
For Readers of: Audio, Contemporary, Coming of Age, Racial/Ethnic Diversity, Realistic Fiction, Romance, YAA tender hate-to-love YA romance about two teens who connect through their high school poetry club, where the power of the written word tears down the walls they’ve built around their hearts.
No one in Delray knows Jae Aƒenyo’s story—that she’s a teen mom who placed her baby for adoption—and she intends to keep it that way. After moving in with her uncle, Jae is looking for a fresh start. But an accidental run-in with the school’s delinquent Derek Patel is not exactly what she had in mind. She soon finds a haven in the poetry club—at least, until Derek joins.
Derek Patel is desperately clinging to his old life—where his dad was alive, his mom was healthy, and they lived in an oceanfront estate instead of a run-down pink bungalow. He’ll do anything to hide his problems from his friends, including breaking into his old house to keep up the charade that he still lives there. But the house now belongs to the school’s lit teacher, who offers him the chance to join the poetry club as a penance.
As the newest members of the club, Jae and Derek are tasked with planning the end-of-semester poetry reading. While Derek is hell-bent on keeping his broken family a secret, Jae is desperate to prove to her uncle that she’s more than a walking statistic—which means guarding her heart against Derek, who her uncle thinks is no good.
A poignant exploration of love, loss, and the power of words to draw people together, The Free Verse Society announces the arrival of an important new voice in YA romance
*MY THOUGHTS*
This is a hard one to review. On the one hand I enjoyed it. But on another hand, I read this too early, before people started adding the list of content warnings, and I was triggered at a very bad time while reading this. Can we PLEASE get a space for people to add content warnings to books somewhere on Netgalley so we don’t request it and have it ding against my ratio!
Anywho, the part I liked was the romance and friend part of this. They came together when they needed the other most and helped each other heal. I was a bit worried like Jae that they were mostly trauma bonding, but they got it together in the end. And in the end I was glad to see that it wasn’t straightforward. She gave him hell for a good minute before they came together and made the right decision. I also thought it was a little weird that he didn’t like her at first and then all of a sudden he was in love? It was a little weird.
I didn’t like that they just called his mom sick. Yeah that’s technically the thought, but at the same time, I would have liked to know that she was sick with addiction. I could have made the choice before checking this out that not choose this one. I had an aunt who OD’ed and almost lost an uncle, and now a cousin; addiction is not something I want to read. And especially not when one of them is still fighting it. It caught me off guard and I had to put this down for a minute.
Other than that, I also like the poetry in all this. I was sad that we didn’t get that much because of all the extra that’s going on, but it was still good. I had a lot of fun with what it did have. And I learned something about poetry as well, so I thought that was pretty cool. It even helped to change my mind on one of the characters that was annoyed me the entire time I was reading this. But in the end they surprised me and it helped change my opinion on him lol
This was a surprise. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. This was one that will be with me for a little while. I didn’t love it, but I got enough out of it to know this was still a good book. I hope y’all pick this one up!
Overall, I give this
