This is the Mask: A Book Blog

Thank you NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for the ARC of Heidi Becker’s debut poetry collection Once Upon a Midnight Scroll!

Have you ever read a book and felt like the author had looked into your mind and then wrote down everything they saw there but in a way that made so much more sense than your weird, often-rambling thoughts? Heidi Becker’s incredible book Once Upon a Midnight Scroll felt like reading a secret journal: free-flowing anger, the “nice girl” who keeps quiet finally uncensored and allowed to roar, scream, wail like a Bean Sidhe about her pain and her heartbreak and disappointment and everything else that eats away at us. I want to grow up to be like Heidi Becker (I’m probably old enough to be her mother.)

Becker’s work reminds readers that we are allowed to speak up for ourselves, that we are allowed to be angry and disgusted, and that really, we aren’t angry enough. Becker speaks her truth and doesn’t care who doesn’t like it. She is a fierce writer and a brilliant poet. This book is truly inspiring. I want my daughters to read it; I want my granddaughter to read it when she is a bit older, so she knows that she has the right to be who she is and feel what she feels, and to forge ahead fearlessly.

Once Upon a Midnight Scroll is due for publication on July 28, 2026.