Not Here To Stay by N.F Afrina

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Title: Not Here To Stay

Author: N.F Afrina

Pages: 569

Genre: Contemporary, Fantasy

Publisher: Whitecoat

Year published: 2022

ISBN: 9789672705192

Blurb:

From bestselling author of Inkling, a painstaking journey of a broken woman determined to heal set in a mythical world - a place of sky oceans, wisteria trees, emotions bottled in vials, scattered houses, dark pasts, backstabbers, unreliable allies and forbidden castles built on clouds.

Sarah Amani is a Worldsmith. At eighteen, she accidentally conjured a mythical world se called Lagenda from her mind with the help od a past lover, Malik. Five years had passed and she was on a straight path to healing and moving on. She made sure nobody could enter Lagenda again and only allowed people to come in as wanderers by giving them petals as tickets. It was her way of ensuring that Lagenda remained hers without destroying it. Just when she thought she could leave her past, she was invited back into the world with a note saying "You know what to do. -M". She had to go back to Lagenda to make sure the person who sent her the note could not take the word from her. What Amani found is that Lagenda was not as abandoned as she thought it was. Determined to save her world from being exploited ad smeared more than how it already is, she sets to burn every door and relic holding the world together. If she cannot keep Lagenda, nobody should. But it seemed that the person who sent the note had other plans.

Together with her trusty dagger, Misya, her sister, a stubborn historian called Najmi and all the misfits she never dreamed of collaborating with, she would find herself propelling straight to her dark past and beloved world.

This book follows a healing journey of Amani, a young woman, a divorcee towards self-forgiveness. The book were divided into three parts whereby the first part introduced me to the main character, Amani herself as well as the world she lives in. As mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of a fantasy book much less an English language one. But here we are to trying things we are not comfortable with. And so, the first part really  requires my 100% focused. I need to get familiarized myself with the world in NHTS where everyone were given a knack. I admit I probably read the slowest in this part as I repetitively feels the need to put the book down and get unnecessary break. 

The second part of the book picked up the pace with Amani going on the journey to make Lagenda, a mythical world she created with two other people hers again. This is where the fun part began. All the secrets and puzzles mentioned briefly in the first part were slowly unraveled. What happened to Amani in the past that breaks her beyond repair and why she became such person she is and what is Malik's role in all that. The last part is where twists upon twists were served to me, cold. I really did not see every twists and betrayal Amani faced in this part. It really blown me away.

Even though it was kinda hard for me to follow Amani's journey, I managed to get it done and it was so lovely. I thoroughly enjoyed the story the writing and of course the fantasy. Following her journey in forgiving herself had opened my eyes to things. The book made me realized so many things especially with emotions, relationships and of course figuring ourselves. The Lagenda world, although it was a bit hard for me to visualize every detail, it was a beautiful place in my mind. The author did a really nice touch in describing them to the finest detail, which helps me to build up a Lagenda in my mind.

The narrative were also multi-POV but mostly of Amani's. I loved reading her monologues especially the one that filled with metaphors. Beside hers, there were also part that were written in the POV of Misya, Amani's sister and Mariam. These multi-POV really helps me to understand the situation better. Overall, I really enjoyed my time reading this book, so if you asked me if the book worth everything, I would say yes (but then I rarely said otherwise but it was a really great read). 

-thes