Posted December 22, 2017 by lynlynsays Book Reviews

Romantic Journey: Thoughts on Love & Misadventure

Love & Misadventure (2013)

By Lang Leav

I finally had a chance to read Lang Leav’s first poetry book, Love & Misadventure. I actually read her later works first before reading this one, and I couldn’t help but notice the transformation she went through in becoming a better poet and writer.

Now, like all her other poetry books, Leav still continues to discuss love, romance, and heartbreak. However, in this particular poetry book, Love & Misadventure, I felt that it was somewhat structured. She divided her book into three parts as if they are like the stages in love.

The first unit is entitled, “Misadventure.” In this section, a majority of her poems discuss the early steps one takes in romance. She discusses the feelings one gets when flirting with someone for the first time or having unrequited feelings for another. It’s interesting how she labels “the early stages of love” as a “misadventure.” As a reader, you might question this (well at least, I did). I think the reason as to why she calls love, a “misadventure,” is because love is all trial and error. There are two connotations to this term, “misadventure.” The “mis–” comes from how love is an experiment. We first become interested in a person due to some kind of attraction, and then we try our best for that “special” someone to like us back. Sometimes it works out, and other times, it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, we move on and go to the next person (or at least we try to). Now, for the “adventure,” we are always on a journey to find that special someone, particularly in the field of love. Humans aren’t meant to be alone—we want to make connections with people. And so, in this book, Leav explores one adventure that every human has: the journey to find love. It sounds cheesy, but Leav’s poetry in this section explores this stage with relatable poems that capture people’s feelings when it comes to unrequited love and courtship.

As for the second section, this one is entitled “The Circus of Sorrows.” This section mainly focuses on heartbreak. It’s interesting to note that this section isn’t part of the main title, Love & Misadventure which are the titles for the other two sections. My reason as to why Leav doesn’t want to include this section in the main title is because she doesn’t want the ultimate objective of her poetry book to be about sadness. She describes “sadness” as a circus which is somewhat true. We go through a whirlwind of emotions that not only excite us but also scare us when it comes to love and romance.

The last section is “Love.” It’s pretty obvious as to what this section talks about, so I’m not going to talk about it. Plus, “love” is the whole essence of all her poetry books.

Furthermore, by reading this book last, I notice how developed and mature Lang Leav’s thoughts and writing style has become when comparing this one to her later works. In this book, she mainly used simple phrases in two to three stanzas. There was also less prose and a lot more rhyming.

Like always, I recommend any Lang Leav book. In fact, she has a new book coming out this 2018!

5/5