!!!Spoiler Warning!!! If you haven’t read this book yet, I give away some key spoilers!
Shatter Me
by Tahereh Mafi
This was an incredibly strange book to review.
It actually started out as a two star read, but by the end it had worked its way up to a comfortable four.
The book is in first person and the main character, Juliette, has been locked up in an asylum for the best part of a year. She writes in a choppy, almost irritating way, with repetitions, strikes and sentence fragments dotted copiously throughout the page.
It’s incredibly annoying, but as the book progresses, and Juliette learns a little more about herself and the world around her, the writing begins to change, too. By the end of the book it’s rare to see these idiosyncrasies much at all.
If the truth is told, while I could have done without all the hideous repetition, the writing style was a pretty unique way to get inside the fragmented mind of Juliette’s character. I think it was pretty cool really.
You are not normal. You never have been, and you never will be. Embrace who you are.
The story is in a dystopian setting and follows Juliette. Juliette cannot touch anyone. Her touch can be literally lethal. Basically, she has this superpower/curse that means whoever she touches (bare skin to bare skin) experiences extreme amounts of pain, and if the touch lasts long enough, possible death.
Because of this, Juliette has been locked away in an asylum for her, and everyone else’s, safety. Except, they don’t exactly treat the patients very well. Juliette has to navigate the shower room in the dark, doesn’t know when her next meal will be, is used to being isolated and ignored, and doesn’t own anything except for a tiny notebook and pen.
Obviously, the story really picks up when we finally get out of this setting. If you can suffer the book through the asylum chapters, you’ll probably enjoy the rest. I know I did.
I don’t want to be your creature. I don’t want to hurt people.
The world-building was good, but perhaps a little preachy for my personal tastes. Basically, we’re set in a future in which most animals and crops have died off, the birds have stopped flying, and the clouds have changed colour. People are literally starving to death and the Reestablishment have taken over.
The Reestablishment are a sort of dictator government that controls the population at gunpoint in the name of order. They have armies by the dozen, and the people are trained to obey orders and curfews on a whim.
It’s not handled badly, but every now and then there’s an explanation for why the world has ended up like this and it turns out it’s because we didn’t treat the planet right, and we were putting poison in our bodies, and humans are a plague and blah, blah, blah. Honestly, I felt as though the book was a couple of pages short of trying to convince me that vaccines were bad and chem-trails are going to end us all! I don’t really appreciate preachy morals in books. I’m reading so I can forget how shitty the world is sometimes, I don’t need reminding.
Our people are dying because we are feeding them poison. Animals are dying because we are forcing them to eat waste, forcing them to live in their own filth, caging them together and abusing them. Plants are withering away because we are dumping chemicals into the earth that make them hazardous to our health. But these are things we can fix.
There is a huge romance that runs through the book. Juliette and Adam are head over heels in love. There are some cute scenes between them, but overall I didn’t much like this either. It feels very convenient to the plot, that Adam, who Juliette knew in school has finally found this girl that he never spoke to as a child, and has been in love with her since forever. Oh, and did I mention that Adam is one of the very few people Juliette can touch without him experiencing pain?
I know there’s probably a lot of very interesting explanations for all this, but it’s still a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? Not to mention the insta-love thing this couple have going on.
Not really my cup of tea as far as that goes, but otherwise the characters were all pretty interesting and fleshed out nicely.
God I’d love to just take a bite out of you.
For a book that started out with a lot of heavy sighing and eye rolling on my part, I’m intrigued enough by the story now that I definitely want to read the sequel. It really picked up in the latter part of the book and I started reading with true pleasure.
If you like interesting writing styles, dystopian futures, and cute but instant romances, this book might be right up your alley!
Villain Rating
Well, this is pretty clear cut one. The villain of this book is Warner, and what a wonderful baddie he is! He’s got some crazy fascination with Juliette that makes him idolize her and try to possess her all at once. He’s a trained killer for the Reestablishment, and doesn’t hesitate to put children in harms way to get what he wants. He’s forceful, abusive and obsessed.
He never does anything to directly harm Juliette, but certainly abuses her anyway. He keeps her locked up, forces her to do as she’s told or he punishes someone else, kills in front of her and places her in impossibly cruel situations. He’s been created at the hands of a super strict family, but is that really any excuse for what he does? I will admit he has some wonderful lines, though. I have a real soft spot for Warner. He’s adorably evil. 8/10
Happy Reading,
Claire
Love the Villain 