Shatter Me | Tahereh Mafi

Book: Shatter Me

Author: Tahereh Mafi

Age Rating: young adult (12+)

Page Count: 464 pages

Star Review: 3.5/5 stars

Summary: One touch is all it takes. One touch, and Juliette Ferrars can leave a fully grown man gasping for air. One touch and she can kill.

No one knows why Juliette has such an incredible power. It feels like a curse, a burden that one person alone could never bear. But The Reestablishment sees it as a gift sees her as an opportunity. An opportunity for a deadly weapon.

Juliette has never fought for herself before. But when she's reunited with the one person who ever cared about her, she finds a strength she never knew she had.

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

I have very very very mixed feelings about this book. It wasn't bad, it was more... odd. I'm not gonna lie, Tahereh Mafi has an absolutely gorgeous writing style and I loved how it was written with repetition and strike-throughs to show how Juliette's mind works. That was actually probably my favorite part of the book and it was great and all but there were definitely a few problems I wasn't able to look past.

The first thing was that this book's romance feels a little off. It felt sort of instalove and since Juliette and Adam had known each other for years before, I guess they're allowed to fall in love quickly, but it still felt unrealistic. That even after not seeing Juliette for years he still felt in love with her. It was a bit odd to me and I just really disliked the way the romance developed, especially since the relationship got somewhat intimate really quick.

Next, I did like the characters. Juliette was very interesting to me with her condition and I'm very excited to learn more about it. She felt somewhat unoriginal, like I have seen characters like her before but I didn't mind it too much. She sometimes plays off the damsel in distress and I disliked that, since I absolutely DESPISE the damsel in distress trope. It's always bothered me and it always will. And I have a very love-hate relationship with Adam. Like, he's fine and I appreciate his character and how he cares for Juliette but he was also really annoying. His character is insanely moody and while it was something I could shrug off at first, it started getting insufferable near the end of the book and I often will be reading scenes with Adam and want to slap him, since there are times he's so unnecessarily rude to the character, Kenji who I actually like so far. Kenji is goofy but knows his limits, which I always appreciate.

So far I love how the plot is developing and I'm really excited to see how this trilogy goes. With all the drama with the Reestablishment and Warner (speaking of Warner, he's an incredible villain and I'm excited to see where his character goes) this book can go so many ways and I'm so excited to see which one develops.

Would I recommend? Yes!