Family relationships remain a key influence in Tavakoli’s writing, Honesty has its own consequences, and whether it concerns personal subject matter (her dementia poems, for example), or more wide-reaching themes of nature or conflict, the poems in this collection strive to reveal the importance of introspection and integrity. Recognising that life is not always filled with light and positivity, darker thoughts and language are scattered intermittently throughout the collection as acts of surprise, mimicking an emotional roller coaster of the human condition. In the short series of 10 stand-alone Gaza poems, words are offered up as a means of expressing emotional reactions to war and its consequences, but also acting as a catharsis. A Unison of Breaths is Tavakoli’s attempt to face truth, as she sees it, ‘warts and all’.