Anxious in a Sweet Store is Anna Jacobson’s second illustrated poetry collection where the ‘sweet’, whimsical, humorous, and quirky is juxtaposed with the ‘anxious’ forces of mental illness within the disabling mental health ‘care’ system. Dip into this collection as you please, pick and choose, or devour the whole lot from start to finish. You are invited to take lessons in anxiety, play a French horn, learn how to photograph poets, and haunt a seclusion room in a psychiatric ward. Themes of food, family, dreams, and culture crystallise, while the poet’s mind is fizz bang sherbet on the tongue. Anxious in a Sweet Store is an inventive collection of poems that build and enrich each other across threads of music, anxiety, and observation from a writer who wants her voice heard so others feel less alone in their experiences.