Dumped by Amal Nadiah Book Review

 

Dumped: A Journey of Lessons Through Breakups, Mishaps and Misadventures

Author: Amal Nadiah Ghazali
Publisher: MPH Group Publishing
Released: September 1st, 2017
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
Characters: Unnamed young woman, The Boy, The Friend, etc…

 

 

 

Synopsis:

In this book, you’ll follow the story of a girl who’s in her 20’s going through a series of events, includes vacations, working life, family related occurrences and not forgetting her love life. Full of lessons that’ll definitely impact you as a reader.

My Review :

First of all, many thanks to the author for reaching out and sending me a copy of her debut novel. I was so thrilled upon getting DM from her and I read the synopsis, the book sounded something that I am interested in, so I was sold immediately.

First impression of this book was not what I expected at all to be honest. The book format was different from what I imagined because the chapters are in the form of lessons, as in lesson 1, 2 and so on. But it was okay. As I started to read this book, I was really impressed by the life lessons that were written by the author. I love it so much as it is relevant and every single young woman out there will definitely find it useful and brilliant. Next, I was amazed by how crazy relatable some of the issues or experience written in the book. The author managed to capture the exact feeling and situation of certain incidents perfectly. I was hooked and almost cried by how real and true those feelings were described.

 

Also, as I read this book, I somehow realised that this book is about the author’s own life experience, at least I’m thinking it is. (If what I’m thinking is true) To me, it’s extremely a bold move for her to open up and put this story out for the public to read. Not only the events that happened in her life, also the emotions that she felt throughout the events, which I really respect and adore so much about the author and this book.

“This is because no two people are the same, and regardless of how many times you fall in love the experience will be different. No one can be replaced or completely compared to another, and as a result, every farewell is unique, thus not making it any easier than before.”
– Amal Nadiah Ghazali, Dumped 

Despite all of the praises, I did find a few things about the book that I didn’t enjoy that much. First is the repetition of words and thoughts or issues. Sometimes, as I read, I’d notice vocabularies were being overused at certain point in a page or two. Then, I found out that some issues were being brought up twice or more along the story. This I found a bit redundant and it made me feel like ‘can we skip this part already?’ but I couldn’t because the context used was different.

“The lesson was that I could never lead a fulfilling life if I kept believing that I needed someone else to be happy. I should feel privileged to have companionship and enjoy it like every other wonderful gift in this life, but I should never feel as though I was not enough on my own.”
– Amal Nadiah Ghazali, Dumped 

Second was lack of coherence. Some chapters in this book touch on other things besides her relationship. For  instance, there’s this one chapter talking about how the main character admires the people who taught and helped out the orphans that she was helping at that time, as well as the respect she has for educators, for teaching the younger generations. Then, at the end of the chapter, the author inserted something related to women settling down and that the main character missed on being on dates, which made me puzzled a little. I think that maybe the author somehow trying to tie in everything with the theme of relationship but at times, it just didn’t work out and it slightly disrupted my reading flow. But all of these are absolutely my personal views, I don’t want to project it on anybody else.

To conclude, I’d definitely suggest this book to all the ladies out there, especially the ones in their 20’s. You’ll find this book very interesting, inspiring, helpful and I hope relatable as well. I’m really grateful to be given the chance to read this book, so many lessons have been gained and it was an enjoyable read overall.

Rating : 4 / 5 stars