This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Free Book Program, which is open to all readers and is completely free. The author will provide you with a free copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. You and the author will discuss what sites you will post your review to and what kind of copy of the book you would like to receive (eBook, PDF, Word, paperback, etc.). To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email.
This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Review Exchange Program, which is open to all authors and is completely free. Simply put, you agree to provide an honest review an author's book in exchange for the author doing the same for you. What sites your reviews are posted on (B&N, Amazon, etc.) and whether you send digital (eBook, PDF, Word, etc.) or hard copies of your books to each other for review is up to you. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email, and be sure to describe your book or include a link to your Readers' Favorite review page or Amazon page.
This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Donation Program, which was created to help nonprofit and charitable organizations (schools, libraries, convalescent homes, soldier donation programs, etc.) by providing them with free books and to help authors garner more exposure for their work. This author is willing to donate free copies of their book in exchange for reviews (if circumstances allow) and the knowledge that their book is being read and enjoyed. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email. Be sure to tell the author who you are, what organization you are with, how many books you need, how they will be used, and the number of reviews, if any, you would be able to provide.
Julia Cirignano is writer from Boston Ma. She was homeschooled through high school, and graduated from Endicott College with a BA in Creative Writing. Julia has several articles published by Limelight Magazine and That Music Magazine, and poetry published in The Endicott Review, The Endicott Observer, Mad Swirl, The New York Literary Magazine, Red Wolf Journal, The Somerville Times, and The Wire’s Dream Magazine. She recently self-published a book of poetry titled White Wine & Medical Marijuana. She enjoys reading American Literature, writing poetry, playing guitar, and riding her horse Leo.
Reviewed by Robin Goodfellow for Readers' Favorite
White Wine and Medical Marijuana, by Julia Cirignano, is a bittersweet compilation of poems that describe the pain of being in love. Each poem is like a brutal wake-up call to anyone who has ever been in love. From being forgotten to watching a womanizer using girls only for his pleasure, each phrase delves into the mindset of what it’s like to fall out of love, to lose the person you care about, or to wish you’ve never been in love at all. Cirignano reverses that old fairytale-like mindset of what love will always be, illustrating the shattered remnants of what love once was.
One poem that particularly touched me was “It’s Not Funny.” I’ve met a lot of guys like that, the ones who believe they could do anything they wanted with the women they see, as if they were nothing more than toys to them. But even so, the women still have to toughen up, laugh it off as if it doesn’t bother them. It makes me wonder why those women allow men to treat them so badly, but then I realized it to be just one of the ways in which false love can take form. Even so, some of the other poems did bring a smile to my face. They were funny enough to remind the reader of what it felt like to fall in love in the beginning, before reality happened.
The title alone describes how love is, how we tend to rely on drugs such as white wine and medical marijuana to get us through the pain. But even then, we still have to carry on with our lives, with the naive thought that love will always watch us from the corners of our minds. It’s that aspect that I loved the most. Cirignano describes the initial feelings of falling in love, but she also describes the harsh culminations of it, as well as the emotions that come with it. The title also designates love as a drug, that though we may get high from it, we always end up crashing down. As such, I would recommend this book to fans of Hush by Nicole Lyons and The Words Between Us by C.J. Blaise.
