• This is a bittersweet story about 31 year old Maira, a successful caterer, where one day, at that point of her career, she had to provide cartering service for her own ex-husband's wedding. — The story of her past? It started with a young 22 year old Maira that had an arranged marriage with Annas, where his final stage cancer patient mother wished the young lady to be his life partner. Going into that marriage, Maira had to sacrifice her dreams and career, moved to an entirely new city, became the caretaker for her mother in law, and tried her best to be the best wife to her husband. But things happened soon after, things started to unfold, the untold, and the true feelings. Only just a couple months into the marriage, she was divorced by her husband with talak tiga.
She wasn't strong, and the awful event doesn't only stop there as she had to face many challenges and public prejudice towards the status of 'janda' or specifically, a 'female' divorcee ; This is a tale of how this lady rose and move forward with her life to become the stronger and bigger person. — With how things has become, she had to face her ex-husband once more, and she had to choose whether to live in her past trauma, or move on from it. And during this 'current' new event, more things started to unfold even more, and new things has yet to come. This is a story about Maira. This is her story.
• First of all, I just wanted to mention that Nurul Syahida is such a great and fantastical author. Her writing was so easy to follow, casual at times, but still able to convey the essence of deep emotions from the story and characters. Her arrangements of plots was absolutely great, the dialogues between different people with different personalities were so well done. The values and morals from her stories were also absolutely heartfelt and touched me so much. — One thing about this particular story, jarang saya sakit hati teramat sakit yang still stayed with me an entire hour, bukan sebab marah, sebab I could really feel how the character herself feel. And the author's writing makes me able to feel that. It's just sooo well written.
• Looking back at the genre percentages at the back of the book, it makes me wonder how 'Love' was on the largest percentage, because there's basically very minimal of love 'romance' it it. Conflicts and friendship should've took the larger percentage kot. But if love as in self, familial, and friendship love, maybe lah kot, but there's a seperate tag for tag so I'm not reallysure myself, because this ISN'T a love story haha — What I can myself can describe what this story is about, probably slice of life, tragedy, friendship, and self healing.
~ mentions of spoiler at this point onwards ~
• The friendship told in the story was soooo beautiful. Let me tell you, other parts were sad, but I mostly cried due to the friendship and moments between Maira and Hafs. Hafsa's genuine care, how she stepped up to help immediately, how she stayed by Maira's side despite having her own life and career, how she keeps up to date with Maira for the next 8 years of friendship, her advices that really took consideration of Maira's situations and feelings. It's just so wonderful.
• Truly, I'm not really a fan of Annas' ending, it felt quite rushed and almost randomly convenient? I'm a bit confused and clueless over how fast he changed his mind. But maybe he's right about 'people changes', and I just don't get him.
On top of that, unless I went over things and couldn't really process the information, there's one thing that's still hasn't been answered, which is why he needed to proceed with the wedding. He once mentioned on his monologue that he REALLY needed to, and together with how he was being defensive and secretive over his previous marriage with Maira, I was really sure there's some kind of planhe's trying to do. — I initially thought there was going to be a further explanation on it, or maybe there's a benefit for him that came out from that marriage, or that he has actual plans to get back with Maira. But to my disappointment, there's none. Sebab somehow he also had an affair with another different lady juak. Man was tamak.
• But now thinking about it, maybe Annas really is just an arse through and through, how he only slept at his mother's room only so he could talk with his scandal, how easily he forgets about his mother, how he has been around in the country for a couple of years but never step his foot to visit his mother's grave. BUT THEN, the way how broken he was and how he revisited his memory with his mother and how that event changed him even for a short period of time. — what I can concluded, maybe due ro how he was raised by a single mother and was told to man up since his childhood, and as he grew up, she technically controlled his entire life 'for the best', I can assume that maybe he felt that he's finally free after his mother passed away. He can do whatever he actually wanted to. To liven up childhood he wasn't been able to have, so he became a manchild instead. But I guess little did he know, he wasn't able to decide at all what actually he wanted without his mother's guide. Maybe I was wrong about this, maybe I'm not, who knows aye?
Nevertheless he's such a huge arse, even after what happened with Maira, with Billie, and everything that happened in the UK, 8 years kot, he somehow NEVER been able to change and decide things for himself, siap lying around and doing stupid things around gik. Ish marah saya.
• Personally, I think the ending was a bit too rushed though. The way I was getting anxious over how there's still no clear conclusion or hints on what will happen yet there's only less than a hundred pages left. About Annas, about Sol, About her own feelings and closure, and what to come, Everything was dropped off all together at the same time dudi dudi, macam splash of cold water. Yes I know there was one part yang macam 'eh sussy' but there's no clear hint that there's going to be an affair going on, jadi bila jadi macam ya, I was like 'eh so ya conclusion for their story kah' haha. — Well I guess maybe the timeline was just super realistic thus the rushed kot, because none of them have the same schedule with one another, and they barely know one another juak, sebab ya lah kali. Tapi I still maseh rasa nya rushed hh.
• One final thing — AAA I WANT TO READ MORE ABOUT MAIRA AND SOL AFTERSTORY! The bits of their moments was nice enough, from silly, to in and depth heartfelt moments, it really did left me such a huge impact and wanting for more. They simply resonates with one another, especially on their backstory, despite the contrast in their personalities too, they oddly mixed well. You know, the realationship between a silly child-like yet is secretly mature old man and this serious and tense younger lady, it's just a nice thing to see.
Oh, this is just fun little thing I imagined, but with how the author describes Sol as this tall and huge giant man, and Maira resembling this smol tiny curly lady like Hagu from Honey and Clover, amusingly a part of me suddenly thought of the MCs of 'My Senpai is Annoying' haha! In all seriousness though, in my mind they're like so cute due to this differences, and I can totally imagine thaat their babies would've been even more curlier than the two of them.
Ah, regarding the writing of the conversation between Maira and Sol, I GENUINELY LOVE IT! I really do adore the interactions between them and how full of personality their little conversations was, how unique, fun, and amusing it really was, they really added up a heap full of sugar into the story.
• So yeah! To conclude, I simply really do love the story, and it really do gave out such inspiration overall. The serious issues, the prejudices, the moral and lesson of life within itself, it's a healing read surely!