Book Review: Shatter Me

By: Tahereh Mafi
Pages: 340
Published: 15 November 2011

Summary: 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.

Rating:3

Review: This book was meh. It was not Great. It was not awful. It was probably my least favourite dystopia I've read and I like a lot of dystopia. The writing was unique. There were tons of simile and metaphors, it did get a bit irritating.

The dystopia world is were the government is now The Reestablishment. There is Warner and Adam and then there is the main character Juliette. 

So first for the characters. There is Juliette, I found Juliette weak. I mean I know she was locked in an institution for over a year, but come on you could fight back a bit. That doesn't mean you have to kill anyone, but you don't have to always listen to other people. You can think for yourself. Well Juliette was getting slightly better at the end but still I didn't like her that much. There is Adam, Adam who is the guy who is supposed to be hot, and protective of Juliette, the girl he loves. Seriously he wasn't anything special. He is too like guys in other books, he isn't different. Maybe we'll learn something new in the second book. 

Well then you have Warner. I liked him a bit. He was a mystery throughout the book. He never really tells us anything about himself so he is intriguing and I feel like he has some depth compared to Juliette and Warner. I think was he has the creepy and unhealthy obsession with Juliette. He's confusing, though we know very little about him from this book. I think the eBook story Destroy Me from Warner's point of view will explain more. 

Let me make this very clear-- I do not think Warner and Juliette should be together. Juliette seems to get along with Adam and she hates Warner. Warner just has more character than Adam. No this does not mean I am choosing a 'team' for one of the guys. I wouldn't usually say this but if all the characters die Julitette, Warner, Adam, and everyone else. I would probably laugh. Well all in all for the characters I couldn't connect with them very much, so that makes it harder to enjoy the book.

The writing was unique and a bit odd. It was interesting and good mostly but some of the metaphor's just really don't make sense. Take this one for example:

"He's wrong he's so wrong he's more wrong than an upside-down rainbow." (page 125)

Really an upside-down rainbow? I mean come on. I don't think an upside down rainbow would be as wrong as she is trying to make it. It was be extremely weird but not wrong in this sense.

I don't have a favourite quote from this book, it just didn't have anything super memorable.

I don't think this is a very good book review, so I might come back and edit it later. Plus my thoughts on this book were kind of scattered. I hope you understood it well enough.


Hopw you had a good weekend and got some reading in like I did!
-Jane