MY Reading Journey Part 1 ( Bandung Menjelang Pagi)

Hello Hive Book club, it's good to be back again writing here after almost four months hasn't been active in reviewing books anymore, I want to start participating in an interesting challange, which is #mondayhivebookprompt, I want to review a little novel called Bandung Menjelang Pagi written by Brian Khirsna.

Welcome back to my morning reading book session! It's a new habit I'm trying to build to bring back my reading routine after a healthy morning jog (even though I haven't managed to jog today).

In Indonesia this novel was named one of the saddest novels of 2024 ago, so because yesterday I had time to go to Bandung too, I finally decided to buy this book and want to read it to the end.

Sofar's novel is divided into 18 main chapters that are quite light with a plot that tends to be very slow at the very beginning. At the beginning, the author wants to bring the main premise, which is about the city of Bandung that can turn into a city that is no longer the same.

Bandung, which is often romanticised as a beautiful place filled with hope and love, has a darker side that is often covered up by many people, making it a city of its own.

When reading this book, you will be brought into the character of a rebellious Bandung boy who comes from the lower class named Dipha. This rebel boy is told to be able to do many things to make a living. He does many jobs in a day to make a living.

Many interesting concepts of life from Dipha's character are told by the author clearly in this book, just take one of them, namely in the part of Dipha's babble to call Bang Karina a muscular transgender who works on the other side of Bandung.

Dipha will later meet a weak and sickly female character named Vindha, this is where the plot starts to run more exciting than the previous plot. Many things are out of the ordinary and enough to make you laugh while reading this novel.

So far, from the first chapter to page 100, I still haven't seen the sad side of this novel, so I feel that so far this novel is still included in the novel with a comedy romance genre that feels like teenlit.

This teenlit vibe will again be felt when reading the synopsis at the back with a sentence written ‘However, unfortunately the two of them often forget, that in fact, the typical gift from Bandung is: Heartbreak’.

There are no excessive expectations when reading this book, because it is indeed a light novel that should have been read at the end of last year, but until now it is still not finished, hiks even though there are still many other books waiting to be read.

I hope to finish this novel as soon as possible this week, thanks for reading this short review of the novel entitled Bandung Menjelang Pagi. See you!