Genre: Seram

Format: Paperback

Tarikh Terbitan: 25 Jun 2020

Mukasurat: 292

Sinopsis (Goodreads): Kerana desakan hidup, Lela Palatute yang baru berusia 12 tahun telah dikahwinkan dengan seorang lelaki yang jauh lebih tua oleh ibunya sendiri. Dia kemudian terpaksa menjalani kehidupan sebagai seorang isteri dalam sebuah banglo mewah yang diwarisi suaminya, jauh dari kehidupan lamanya sebagai remaja yang masih bersekolah.

Semasa menerokai banglo itu dan kawasan sekitarnya, dia telah bertemu seorang wanita tua yang mahu membunuhnya serta makhluk misteri di dalam loteng yang sering mengikutnya ke mana-mana. Enggan terus hidup diselubungi misteri, Lela merancang cara untuk kembali kepada kehidupan asalnya dan keluar daripada malapetaka yang sedang berlaku.

Rating: 4 / 5 ★

Sumpah menceritakan kisah tentang Lela, seorang kanak-kanak berumur 12 tahun yang terpaksa berkahwin dengan seorang lelaki tua atas desakan hidup. Lelaki tersebut boleh dikatakan sama umur dengan ayahnya sendiri yang telah meninggal dunia. Tidak lama setelah dipaksa menjadi isteri orang pada umur yang sangat muda, Lela dipaksa berpindah dengan suaminya ke sebuah banglo mewah, dan di situ kehidupannya semakin buruk dihantui dengan pelbagai masalah dan misteri.

Pada asalnya, aku teragak-agak untuk sertai BlogTwit Tour ini selepas membaca sinopsis Sumpah, kerana aku cukup tidak suka dengan subjek child marriage. Tetapi pada masa yang sama, aku juga tertanya-tanya kenapa ibu watak utama sendiri sanggup mengahwinkan anaknya dengan lelaki tua tu, dan aku juga tertarik dengan wanita tua dan makhluk misteri yang akan menghantui watak utama tersebut. Sepanjang aku baca Sumpah, hati aku memang panas membuak-buak dengan manusia yang membenarkan Lela dikahwinkan dengan lelaki yang jauh sangat tua daripadanya, dengan alasan jika Lela tak berbuat demikian, keluarga mereka tidak akan mampu bertahan hidup tanpa sebarang harta.

Yang paling aku tak tahan, orang yang mengakui beragama tu sendiri yang mengatakan Lela patut dikahwinkan. Aku sebagai pembaca memang rasa nak menjerit je. "Orang-orang agama" seperti inilah yang merosakkan nama baik Islam tu sendiri sebab suka nak guna agama untuk justify kehendak nafsu masing-masing. Sepatutnya, sebagai anak yatim, Lela patut dibantu oleh orang kampung dari segi sumbangan, bukannya menyerahkan seluruh hidup dia pada orang tua yang mengambil kesempatan keatasnya. Tetapi itulah realiti sedih bagi banyak kanak-kanak perempuan sehingga ke hari ini, mereka yang masih muda dan naif tidak mampu hendak melakukan apa-apa untuk selamatkan diri mereka, termasuklah Lela Palatute sendiri.

Dari segi plot, aku memuji cara penceritaan penulis. Aliran cerita senang untuk dibaca dan mudah difahami, serta penulis juga berjaya masukkan beberapa babak yang aku rasa agak menghiburkan yang membuatkan Sumpah tidak terlalu serius dan bosan untuk dibaca. Aku seorang saja ke yang tergelak bila penulis masukkan "aura calon ke 19", barangkali untuk menyindir orang yang asalnya menggunakan ayat tersebut? 😂 Selain itu, babak-babak ngeri dimana lembaga hitam muncul untuk menghantui Lela pun aku suka, boleh kata meremang jugalah bulu roma semasa membacanya. Sengaja aku membaca Sumpah pada waktu malam ketika duduk di rumah kayu nenek aku di kampung untuk ambil mood, memang memuaskan.

Aku juga sangat suka dan kasihan dengan watak Lela. Pada umur yang sangat muda, Lela dipaksa untuk berkahwin, dipaksa untuk menjadi dewasa dan fikir bagaimana hendak melayan suami. Peluang dia untuk menjalani kehidupan kanak-kanak dan membesar dengan baik hilang macam itu saja, dek kerana orang dewasa yang tidak bertanggungjawab. Memang untuk keseluruhan cerita ini, memang tiada seorang dewasa pun yang benar-benar fikir tentang kebaikan untuk Lela. Aku rasa jijik dan marah dengan setiap seorang daripada mereka, termasuklah ibu Lela sendiri yang asyik memarahi Lela bila Lela cuba mengadu, bukannya melindungi Lela.

Pada asalnya, selepas membaca sinopsis Sumpah, aku mengagak yang elemen seram dan misteri akan muncul selepas Lela berpindah ke rumah banglo suaminya, namun aku salah. Makhluk misteri yang menghantui Lela itu ada daripada awal lagi, membuatkan aku tertanya-tanya mengapa Lela dihantui dengan sangat teruk. Walaupun muda, aku dapat lihat yang Lela ni bukan seorang yang mudah patah semangat. Dalam ketakutan dia atas dunia baru yang langsung tidak diketahuinya ditambah pula dengan makhluk misteri yang mengganggu kehidupan hariannya, Lela masih berani untuk berusaha mencari jawapan dengan caranya sendiri. Pada penghujung Sumpah, apabila segalanya terbongkar, aku memang kagum dengan cara penulis simpulkan cerita ini.

Secara keseluruhan, walaupun aku rasa marah sepanjang membaca Sumpah, namun aku mengakui yang aku sangat suka dengan buku ini dan memang aku akan cuba untuk membaca karya Shaz Johar yang lain pada masa akan datang. Terdapat banyak mesej penting yang diberi perhatian dalam buku ini, termasuklah child marriage, rape, ilmu hitam, keadaan terdesak kerana kedaifan, penggunaan agama sebagai alasan untuk mengikut nafsu, serta peranan wanita yang dikatakan tidak boleh melakukan apa-apa untuk diri sendiri tetapi cuma memuaskan hati suami. Wanita dan kanak-kanak perempuan berhak untuk hidup demi kebahagiaan mereka sendiri.

Terima kasih kepada Buku Fixi dan Untitled Book Club kerana menganjurkan BlogTwit Tour bersama Sumpah oleh Shaz Johar. Jangan lupa untuk membaca ulasan buku Sumpah daripada book bloggers yang lain!

My rating: 3 / 5 ★

Sunshine and Whiskey is a self-published collection of poetry about love, loss, longing and lust. At rare moments, the poems would be about self love or escaping toxic relationship. I would like to thank the poet, Lauren White, and BookTasters on Twitter for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. And that being said, I will be fully honest with my words.

This review is rather hard for me to write, because I had to DNF this book. I have never DNF-ed a review copy before, but I could not force myself to continue reading Sunshine and Whiskey, because I might end up disliking it. I'd hate for that to happen, because although I only read the book halfway through, there are good points about it, and if I were to continue, I would feel forced.

The book is divided into five parts—Summer, Lauren, Broken, Awakened and Boldly. I only read until the Broken part, and I still do not see the point of these parts? It might be personal to the poet, perhaps when she had written these poems, those were the categories she thought of. But to me, they seemed rather meaningless, as the poems do not seem to be categorised at all. At one moment, I would be reading about a poem where the persona was longing for the person that she loved, and the next moment she would hate the person and wanted to move on, but the next poem would be about longing again.

I personally think it would have been better if the poet categorised her poems into sections, maybe starting with falling in love, and then falling out of love, continued with longing and lastly moving on. It can be arranged in any way, but it would definitely be easier to read if they were categorised together, instead of being thrown altogether.

I am aware that this book is self published, so maybe the poet had no editor to check on her work, but I think it's better for me to still point this out. I found several grammatical errors and typos, which is not too glaring, but as a reviewer, I do think it's quite noticeable. One of it is the wrong use of "your" and "you're". Please note that "your" means belonging to you, while "you're" is the shortened version of you are. There were occasional times when the word "I" was written in lowercase, which is wrong, (unless it was written like that with a purpose).

And correct me if I'm wrong, but the word "mine" means belonging to me, but if you were to refer to something yours, you would say "my", not "mine". An example of it was in one of the poems (forgive me, but I forgot which one), where the poet wrote "mine ears". I would think that it should have been "my ears". As for the format too, I think each new poem should start on a new page. I'm not sure if the e-book I was given had an error in its format, but there were some poems that started at the end of a page, with one stanza, before continuing at the next page. I think it doesn't look neat, and rather distracting. I'm not trying to be smart about any of this, but I believe that if the poet is to ever continue writing, she deserves to know these.

Apart from that, certain poems seem to be very lengthy. I actually do not mind long poems, but the topic of the poems seemed to be repetitive, and when some poems started right after a poem ends instead of at a new page, it felt like reading a paragraph without a full stop. It was difficult for me to stay focus. I also think that some of the poems should have a trigger warning for them? I found two poems that mentioned self-harm, which can even be considered as a suicide attempt. Maybe it felt personal to the poet, and perhaps some readers didn't mind them, but I think that it's rather unwise to mention about self harm so vividly in a poetry book. A short trigger warning would be appreciated.

I know that it seemed that I consider Sunshine and Whiskey to be full of negative points, but that would be wrong. There are several poems that I truly love, such as Her Lovely Face, Your Loss, Open the Door, Mordant and Forgotten Things. Other poems also have some paragraphs or stanzas that are beautifully written. I'll share a couple of them below:

The words chosen by the poet are mostly beautiful, and she even used many extravagant words to title her poems. At first I felt overwhelmed by the number of words that I've never heard of, but I had fun learning them. Some of the words include resplendent, rambunctious, vociferous, de rigueur, mordant and many more. I also think that the poet writes good sensual poems, without making them sound cringeworthy or dirty. It would suit best for adult readers that enjoy poetry about love.

Although Sunshine and Whiskey are obviously not meant for me, I do believe that other poetry lovers may love it. To the poet, Lauren White, I wish the best for you in the future if you ever continue writing poetry, and congratulations for your success in publishing this poetry collection on your own ❤️

My rating: 3 / 5 ★

If I were to sum up about The Great Gatsby in simple words, I wouldn't say that it's a story about a great man named Gatsby—because it's not. I would say that it's about a lonely man, caught up in his past and unable to move on from the woman that he loved.

Prior to reading The Great Gatsby, I had no idea what the story is about at all. I was expecting it to be told in a third person point-of-view, or perhaps a first person point-of-view from Gatsby himself, but I was nowhere near close to it at all. Instead, it was told from the point-of-view of Nick Carraway, a man who didn't even know Gatsby when the story started. It was surprising, but also interesting.

The plot as a whole felt good to me, but the journey towards completing it felt choppy and rather distracting for me. Nick doesn't actually know Gatsby inside and out, and he was skeptic towards the latter at most times, so there were moments where I find myself reading about Nick's thoughts that I don't feel like it served any purpose to the story. There was a part where he actually listed all the people that attended one of Gatsby's parties, and I had question marks popping up inside my head through it all. I was already aware that a lot of people (some important, others not so much) attended the parties, what's the point of listing all the names when they won't actually bring any purpose?

I didn't actually end loving any of the characters, but if I were to choose, I'd say that Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker are characters that I'm okay with. I did think Nick seemed to be skeptic towards Gatsby at most times, and I agree with him about it because Gatsby did seem to be quite shady sometimes. Despite that, Nick was not judgmental and he stayed by Gatsby's side as a friend, until the very end. Unlike the others who were there only when Gatsby was at his peak and wanted a taste of his wealth and fame, Nick actually genuinely cared for Gatsby. I guess that's the reason the story was told by his perspective, and thus the book is titled that way. I had nothing much to say about Jordan Baker, but she seemed to be independent and able to carry herself on her own, so I quite liked her.

As for Jay Gatsby himself, I don't actually hate or dislike him. He seemed nice, but he's nicer to people when he has a purpose. I do think he's be the great Gatsby, if he was not so caught up with his past and could just move on from his first love, Daisy. To me, Gatsby is just a lonely man, trapped in his wealth, and obsessed over a married woman. He was nice to Nick and other people, but his obsession over Daisy just ruined him.

And now we have the Buchanans—Daisy Buchanan and her husband, Tom Buchanan. I think it's safe to say that I hate both of these people. I never liked Daisy from the start; her personality just seemed very off and fake, constantly being dramatic and appearing like a sweet helpless pretty young thing. Although her life didn't turn out the way she wanted, she clearly did lead a good life after marrying Tom, and it was unfair of her to "accept" Gatsby once again in her life, when in reality she doesn't have the guts to be truthful to her husband about what she wanted. I honestly hated Tom Buchanan with passion; he didn't have any redeeming qualities at all. All he turned out was being a lousy husband who cheated on Daisy, and then claimed that it was women who "run around too much these days" when he himself was having an affair. He was also racist, mentioning about white supremacy and how they should make sure that "the blacks know their places". He's simply a worthless man, but I guess Daisy and Tom deserved each other since both of them are cheaters anyway.

Although I only gave The Great Gatsby a three out of five stars, I do actually see how this story became a well-praised and loved classic. Fitzgerald's writing are praiseworthy indeed, and despite not being a long story, I believe there are many elements and issues that can be discussed through The Great Gatsby. I acknowledge its worth as a classic, but it's just not meant for me.