Book Review: Whiskey, Words, and a Shovel I by R.H. Sin

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Book Review: Whiskey, Words, and a Shovel I by R.H. Sin

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This one is 0.25 stars. It was honestly a great disappointment; I hardly ever write bad or critical reviews and I don’t know how to approach this one but I will try by remaining respectful and considerate while conveying my honest opinion and true feelings. This author is incredibly overhyped on social media. I realize this is one of his earlier works and there is an improvement that follows every author/poet as the pursue their careers but it does not change the fact that this collection was bland, overly simplified, and rehashing the same exact theme and problem over and over and over again. I “respect” R.h. Sin for his want to spread female empowerment and better behavior and treatment of women by men but this is like preachy and boring. How many times will he say that women are powerful and beautiful while broken and that men should be real men and treat women right…

In my opinion, that’s a given concept and general idea to develop respectful relationships and overall equality but he never talks about the root of these men’s behavior like society, money, power, family, etc. I’m the first person to support this as a feminist but this seemed like forced, like he’s putting himself up there on a pedestal with his simple prose and his free verse poems that are more repetitive than moving. The poetry itself is simple, bland, uninteresting, and non-impactful.

None of the poems made me go “wow!” and I love the modern day free verse poetry we find on our social medias nowadays but this was simply a let down. I can hardly comprehend the hype. Even my best friend loves R.H. Sin. I respect the guy but the poet himself needs some heavy working. Once again the ideas are there but they’re overall simplified and highly repeated over and over again, with the use of the same words “beautiful, broken, strong,” etc etc. I really wanted to love this collection but at this point I hardly like it… like at all…

“Those we love never truly leave us, Harry. There are things that death cannot touch.” 

“In every shining moment of happiness is that drop of poison: the knowledge that pain will come again. Be honest to those you love, show your pain. To suffer is as human as to breathe.”