Shatter Me

Author: Tahereh Mafi
Series: Shatter Me, #1
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: October 2, 2012

I have a curse.
I have a gift.

I am a monster.
I'm more than human.

My touch is lethal.
My touch is power.

I am their weapon.
I will fight back.

No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but the Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon. But Juliette has plans of her own. After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she lost forever.

In this electrifying debut, Tahereh Mafi presents a riveting dystopian world, a thrilling superhero story, and an unforgettable heroine.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Shatter Me... was a pretty decent book. It's not great by any means, but it's not terrible either. I had read the negative reviews and cringed at the first few pages, but by that time, I had already been given a signed copy of Shatter Me and Unravel Me. Passing them over to someone who might better appreciate them was out of the question, given my name was written in capital letters on each title page, so I decided to give them a shot before I would leave them on the shelf for dust to settle. You can imagine my surprise when I found it was nowhere near as awful as I expected.

I've been locked up for 264 days.

I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company. 1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space 26 letters in an alphabet. I haven't spoken in 264 days of isolation.

6,336 hours since I've touched another human being.

Juliette has spent most of her life imprisoned in an asylum, grasping at the remains of whatever sanity and goodness she still has inside of her. In her little room is a window, one that keeps her wondering how the outside has changed since she left it.

All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.

Excuse me as I throw up in my mouth. Juliette is about as bland as young adult heroines come. Like I haven't read about skinny, white brunettes that don't have many friends and hate themselves for what they are. The only thing that marks her different is the purple prose metaphors and similes that run rampant through her mind, some of which don't even make sense. Sure, she's not all up there, but it gets to a point where it's too much. I'm not even sure if the author meant for the nonsensical metaphors to point to her mental state. As for the crossed-out lines that littered the pages, sometimes they bothered me, but not as much as I thought they would. Juliette's major fault is that she's generic.

Hello.

World.

You will forget me.

Sorry, synopsis. I'll have to agree with her on this one.

After the world was struck with a cataclysmic catastrophe, the people have been governed by The Reestablishment. Like others of its kind in dystopian fiction, the Reestablishment rules with an iron fist, reeking of greed, lies, and corruption. They had ripped Juliette from her family and placed her in the asylum all those years ago, waiting for the right moment to mold her as their weapon.

In other words, new government = bad. Rebels = good.

To avoid this terrible fate, Juliette must escape with a boy she loves and aid a revolution and blah, blah, blah, superpowers, blah, Adam, blah.

Yes, a boy she loves. There's a love triangle, guys. There's a love triangle.

[Adam's] lips soften into a smile that cracks apart my spine.

He repeats my name like the word amuses him. Entertains him. Delights him.

In seventeen years no one has said my name like that.

Adam is just as unremarkable as Juliette. He's a good guy, but there's nothing that really picks him apart from love interests like Quince from Forgive My Fins, Ben from Juliet Immortal, Hasani from Every Last Kiss, and so on. While it's easy to believe that Juliette, having been kept in isolation for weeks, fell in love with Adam in a matter of days, his declaration of love was kind of a shocker since I didn't believe that he spent enough time with her to reach that depth. That includes their past.

Warner, Juliette's other man, is messed up, which made his declaration was more understandable and his side of the corner more intriguing. The stars are mostly for him (and a little bit of Kenji) because, like I said, I am a sick, sick bastard who finds fictional psychopaths, unhealthy obsession, and heart-breaking desperation so interesting. It's always been my guilty reading pleasure, although I would, as I've also said before, be entirely against these kinds of things in a real life setting.

Off-topic, but I realized that my feelings for Juliette, Adam, and Warner are almost the same as my feelings for Juliet, Ben, and Romeo from Juliet Immortal. At least Shatter Me was better written.