Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars


Synopsis:
Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war-- and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she's exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

Review:
After all the hype about this book I had to read it to find out what the fuss was.

The writing style is brilliant. I loved the strikeouts to differentiate what Juliet wanted to feel, and what she was actually prepared to feel. The wayward, jagged train of thought is poignant to a person who has withdrawal from human society, and the randomness of actions was excellent.

Gradually as the story continues we don't see as much, as we realise Juliette is becoming accustomed to being around people, or in particular, Adam. Adam, from the start, came across as the good guy and I liked him immediately. The interesting twist as their characters blend is charming and alarming at the same time.

Warner is someone we all know, and his clutch on Juliette was way too freaky to be normal.

As the story continues it sadly brings us back to normaldom, as we experience boring quirks in the story which I didn't like. About two-thirds in I felt the story slow down to a minimum and it didn't really pick up. It meandered in a direction I wasn't expecting, and I'm not sure I really liked the outcome.

I'm not sure why the Author chose to follow the end theme as we were heading in a great direction with the Reestablishment and possibly bringing it down. If Juliette had stayed there and uncovered more anomalies of Warners badness I would have been more satisfied.

Instead we get a mixture of The Incredibles and X-men and it all felt a little too easy to follow a set trope instead of a proper dystopian-apocalyptic finale.

Needless to say, I will read the second book but I won't rush for it.

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