Yang Paling Patah Antara Kita || A Book Review

Yang Paling Patah Antara Kita

Author: Ainul Farihah

Publisher: Jiwa

Released: October 6th, 2022

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 386

Format: Paperback

Characters: Azfar, Firman, Jimi, Zaquan, Mikail, …

“Kau okey?”

Ringkas.

Tetapi paling susah nak jawab.

Walau yang tanya itu sahabat yang paling rapat.

Walau yang tanya itu ahli keluarga sekalipun.

Susah tatkala sebenarnya kita mahu menjawab,”Tak”, tetapi hati sendiri tak pasti apa yang akan jadi lepas tu.

Takut hilang kawan.

Takut kena marah.

“Kau okey tak ni?”

Dia hanya senyum segaris. Macam biasa.

—

Sebuah novel drama psikologikal yang mengetengahkan kesihatan mental dan juga stigma masyarakat.

English

This book follows 4 good friends who are in a university. It’s about their friendship and society’s stigma towards mental health issue.

Three are good, one is broken. All is important.

Source: Goodreads

It’s been such a long time since I last did a proper review. Sorry if this review doesn’t meet your expectation because I think it’s going to be really messy and incoherent but I’ll try okay!

First of all, I bought this book simply because of 2 main reasons:
1. the beautiful cover
2. the hype Malaysian bookstagrammers have been giving this book since it was released.

I must admit at first, I was bored. The story itself is kinda predictable because it’s about mental health and suicidal thoughts or self-harm. It was mentioned on the trigger warning page before the story even started. But I do give credit for the author and the publisher to consider to put the trigger warning at the very start of the book. It’s definitely necessary for some readers.

There was nothing interesting at the first 100 pages, I was thinking of DNF it but the story is readable and it’s not too dry as the author does insert curiosity with hanging sentences or paragraphs. Because I am also a persistent reader, I stick to the end of the book and I did cry (just like other readers who have read this book claimed) and I love the book!

Despite being predictable, the author knows what she’s doing with the plot. Hence, there were few moments in the book, I doubt my prediction, thinking, “Oooohhhh, so it has a different ending? It’s not what I expected it to be? Am I wrong?,” Obviously I’m right about what had happened, I just didn’t know the details of the event but I was tricked by the author’s playful writing, she totally diverts my thoughts to a different possible ending instead. I think that’s brilliant.

I also love the explanation during a trial in the court that goes on for more than a year. Even though not everything written is correct, meaning some could be fabricated, I still find the scenes in the court fascinating and how the lawyers do their investigation really amazes me as a reader.

Talking about lawyers, my favourite character has to be Mikail, the lawyer to one of the four friends who is falsely accused. The most functional character ever created, how he ties everything together is just so perfect. He makes the most sense to me with his humour, witty remarks and his intuition as a lawyer. The most hated character has to be Azfar’s mom. Beside Zaquan, one of the four friends, Azfar’s mom also represents the society with their stigma towards people with mental health issue. If you want to know how evil his mom is, you gotta read this book.

Obviously, this book’s main theme is mental health. I’m really happy the author writes about mental health deeply and not just on the surface. She absolutely smashes her point about mental health awareness by including how the patients feel most of the time and the treatment they attend to and I’m sp glad she writes everything in detail.

However, there’s another thing that I kinda dislike about the writing style but it could be a great thing to others. It’s when an event is being told from different perspectives. For example, one incident would be repeated in 3 consecutive chapters but with different POV. It provides a more wholesome idea and better context on what’s actually going on, it’s not one sided but to me, it irks me tiny bit to read about a situation repeatedly. But is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. In the end, the objective is achieved because readers get to understand the story or the events better.

I expected how everything will turn out but I cried still. Yang Paling Patah Antara Kita is definitely one of the best book I read this year. Glad that it lives up the hype!