Book Review: Beats Apart by Alanda Kariza & Kevin Aditya

Title: Beats Apart

Author: Alanda Kariza & Kevin Aditya

Designer: Astranya Paramarta

Publisher: POP (Imprint KPG)

Pages: 296

Format: Paperback

Published: September, 2015

Price: Rp60.000 (BukaBuku)

Rating: 5 / 5 stars

Date started: November 12, 2015 - Date finished: November 12, 2015

Synopsis:

One man.

One woman.

Their feelings intertwined.

Their hearts beat apart.

“Meeting her was a memorable accident. And you were the collateral damage.”

— M

“You will always be a concept I could never unravel.”

— F

Beats Apart is a fiction of two people going through both pain and pleasure of loving. It started as an experimental project, which was written without a plot and lasted for one month. Alanda Kariza wrote in F’s point of view, while Kevin Aditya spoke on behalf of M. Each writer alternately posted one part of their story every other day on a blog in 2012. The writings are now ready for you to enjoy, in this book stunningly designed by Astranya Paramarta.

Will there ever be someone who stays a heartbeat away from you?

Review:
Beats Apart is a love story told from two perspectives, M and F. As you can see the initials represent the gender of the perspectives narrating this story but if you expect that the two characters are boyfriend and girlfriend then you are surely mistaken. M is a man who has a girlfriend and F is his mistress.

This book is filled with the thoughts and opinions of both of the characters as they narrate how the story goes. The story starts with life after M broke up with his girlfriend and his mistress because he wanted them both, he cannot choose one of them so he decided to break it off with both of them and moved away from another city. When he moved away he thought that he would at least move on from his recent lovers, but he can't stop thinking about F—the mistress. F actually felt the same way about M, even though they are separated she can't stop thinking about him, she misses him.

One day, F received a letter saying that she got accepted to study in Brazil. Before leaving for Brazil she had to visit M one last time. When F visited M sparks flew and they had an unforgettable tryst. So unforgettable that M asked F to stay for a while. Much to his surprise, when F stayed in M's house, he found F's secret that shocked him to the core, a secret that made him question his relationship with F all this time. After finding that secret M is not so sure that F is "the one" for him.

To see each other is probably the only way to fix our heartbreak.

After reading kak Hestia's review of this book and seeing her taking pictures of the book I immediately put this book on my wish list. I didn't buy it directly because it was kind of expensive, fortunately for me recently BukaBuku held a sale of 30% off for all books and I decided to use it to buy this book (and another one). Because this book wasn't ready and had to be ordered from the supplier's warehouse I had to wait a week for this book to arrive. But when it arrived I was able to finish it in a day. By the way, kudos to BukaBuku for such quick delivery! Thanks!

Because meeting her was a memorable accident. And you... were the collateral damages.

This was my introduction to Alanda Kariza's writing, I know that she has written some books before this one but I've never gotten around to wanting it because her books were non-fiction travel books and I do not blend well with non-fiction books as I've never been able to finish them (I start them, but never finish them) so when I saw that this was her fiction work, I said "why not? I'll give it a shot." Let me tell you guys this, Alanda Kariza's writing was so beautiful at times it reminded me of Lang Leav's writing. Of course she has really good english and a very wide range of vocabulary it seems. Her writing partner, Kevin Aditya was a perfect fit too to write the male perspective of this book as he did his part beautifully as well. Their writings were what made this book addictive for me and a lot of the writings in this book were super "quote-able."

Loving you is pain, but being with you is the remedy. You are a drug that a patient needs to consume daily. Or perhaps three times a day.

The story itself was for me quite different as it is a love story told from a man and his mistress, which is quite unheard of (well, for me at least). I really liked every part of this story, except there was this one part where if I tell you it would be a spoiler so I'm going to keep quiet but other than that one part I love the rest. I'm also satisfied with the ending. 

Let's also discuss the fact that the design and layout of this book was sheer genius. The black-white photographs at the start of each chapter were beautiful to look at and how some of the words in this book were set up in a unique manner. I also loved the tone of this book as it stayed consistent with only one color, this sort of of tosca-ish or pastel-ish green (I dunno, I'm not really good at colors).

chapter title | taken and edited by myself

opening chapter photograph | taken and edited by myself

Overall, if you are looking for a light-read, visually pleasing book that you can take photographs of to post on your social media accounts than this is the book to choose! I do agree with kak Hestia's recommendation though, which was since this book is quite expensive, take advantage of online bookstores that give out discounts of this book or borrow this book from a friend. But if you do decide to buy it, you won't regret it (visual-wise)! But then again when it comes to taste everyone's different.

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