Title: Inner Butterflies
Author: Nicolette L. Toth
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 978-1-7283-2252-0
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 117
Reviewed by: Beth Adams
Pacific Book Review
When I received the review copy of Inner Butterflies by Nicolette L. Toth, it had a sticky-note on the cover with the message, “This author is 13 years old!” Anticipating a trite read my take-away when finishing this book was in fact – Wow! This is an amazing accomplishment; a cornucopia of a repertoire of emotions, especially when viewed by a poet with still so many life experiences yet to come.
Written completely in lower case without punctuation, Nicolette embarked on an emotional reveal of her candid feelings with her collection separated into three categories: The Sour; The Savory; and The Sweet. Along with her terse poems, almost all are less than one page, liberally spaced, she has interleaved many pencil drawings which accent the subject of the adjacent poem. My most impressionable poems were three of hers, each of only one line. In her poem titled, “cycle of love,” it reads, “create then destroy” – how insightful and amazing are those words! How many adults have gone through the cycle of love in which the creation energy of a new love affair becomes a negative destruction? In her poem “i’m human” reads “tears are just emotions we can’t express” – again how profound, as she is spot-on with a definition Wikipedia should have on their website. On the topic in her poem titled “clear skies,” she writes, “rainbows are the skies smile/after a rainy day” – how poetic indeed is this observation, offering a child-like innocence of peace and happiness, personifying the sky with emotion.
Totally captivating are all of Toth’s poems, showing a depth and maturity far beyond her years, and exemplifying a talent which this reviewer – along with her many fans – hope to read more from this prolific writer in the future. In the meantime, Inner Butterflies is an excellent gift to many young adults and frankly older readers as well. It is an illustration that thoughts need not be complicated but candidness is a talent which when young is unabashed, prior to the politically-correct of beaten-down filters of life’s experiences which layer emotions to a core rather than a surface. Nicolette L. Toth is truly a talented young lady with a fantastic future penning many of her feelings in the years ahead. I would love to see Toth branch out into other genres of writing as given her sensitivity, she can certainly achieve accolades in many other styles.
