Jeremiah Yuda Umam

Shatter Me (Shatter Me, 1)

Book by Tahereh Mafi

DETAILS

ASIN : 0062085506 Publisher : HarperCollins; 9.2.2012 edition (January 9, 2018) Language : English Paperback : 368 pages ISBN-10 : 9780062085504 ISBN-13 : 978-0062085504 Reading age : 13+ years, from customers Lexile measure : HL650L , The gripping first installment in  New York Times  bestselling author Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me series. 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 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. Includes a special sneak peek for This Woven Kingdom , Tahereh Mafi’s new epic, romantic fantasy trilogy inspired by Persian folklore! Read more

REVIEW

Title: Shatter Me Author: Tahereh Mafi Rating: 3.5 My Review Given that lots of folks have now signed up for my reviews, I feel obligated to actually finish one. :) I've been a wee bit busy publishing Emergence, the last in the Eden's Root trilogy, but I DID have a review waiting in the wings... I recently read Shatter Me and have been waiting for a chance to gather my thoughts for a review. It's been more challenging than I expected. As you know, I'm a huge fan of ya dystopians and apocalyptics, and in that way, Shatter Me is smack in my wheelhouse. But when I sit down to write my review, I find myself perplexed. I'm not certain how to express my feelings and perhaps that's because I can't quite put my finger on them. Lately I've been feeling like the whole STAR rating thing has to go because it's too hard to give just one NUMBER to a novel. Nothing illustrates that better for me than Shatter Me. I need stars for various categories: writing, originality, pace, tension, characterizations, sex appeal, etc. If I got to do that, I think I'd say: Writing - 4.5 - 5.0 Originality - 4.5 - 5.0 (the whole not being able to touch people thing is very compelling...human touch is so very important) Pace - 2.0 - 3.0 Tension - 3.0 - 4.0 Characterizations - 2.5 - 4.0 Sex Appeal - 3.5 *sigh* Sadly, individual stars are the way of things, I guess. I've ended up slipping this book into the 3.5 bucket overall, but that is just my opinion or rating of this book for ME. I'm not sure it is a fair rating for everyone. Not that Ms. Mafi needs my help. Plenty of others have already gushed and squee-ed over this series, so I'm certain my personal take will be just that: personal. As a result of my shifting perspectives on Shatter Me, I have been reduced to lists of pros and cons to find my true feelings. Forgive my split personality disorder-esque ramblings. (No, not schizophrenic. People use this term all the time when they actually mean split-personality. Schizophrenia involves hallucinations like hearing voices or seeing people, as well as possible paranoia. Very different from split-personality disorder.) Pro I found Ms. Mafi's writing style to be unique, adept, and often quite lyrical. I was intrigued by her use of the strike through to signify Juliette's internal censor, the things she didn't even want to admit to herself. It's a clever and effective vehicle. You'll note she even uses it on her cover. (I also think the concept of writing from the perspective of a young woman locked away in solitary for nearly a year was excellent and challenging.) Con Sometimes the vehicle seemed repetitive. And sometimes the lyrical language strayed into rhythmic or repetitive prose that was intended to add beauty or feeling...but it often just jarred my flow. Pro I'm not usually a cover fanatic, but I love the one above (liked it better than the one of Juliette in the dress). It is beautiful and subtle and intriguing. Con I "get" more of the world from this picture than the story. Pro I've been waiting to get to this one for a while and I read it in one sitting. It was a fast and fun read, always a major plus. Con The plot pacing seemed to jump around. Chapters go by (especially in the beginning) where nothing really seems to happen and then big changes all come at once. At times I thought I might put it down, but then I didn't...it kept me going... ("How is this a 'con' then?" I hear you cry. Good point. It's a semi-con because I did think about putting it down on several occasions. That didn't even occur to me with some others I've read.) Pro Juliette is a kick butt heroine-to-be. You know how I love me a tough-a** lady. ;) Con She's apparently stunning and is told so repeatedly by the men around her, but after three years in an asylum and with a mirror in her bathroom available, she didn't look at herself ONCE until just before the end? Even just to see how much she'd changed from 14 to 17 years old? That seemed off. Stretched my believability meter. Like we're supposed to see her as weak and discovering her strength. But in my mind her whole issue was being too strong so why not make her fiercer? Pro At the end, it seems that Juliette is transforming into the strong heroine I craved the entire story. Instead of all the, "woe is me, I'm a freak and a murderer," she starts to be more, "I could make a difference." In a skintight purple suit no less. (Again, she's apparently a bombshell who doesn't know it. Sometimes that bugs me a bit in ya or any genre, actually. - Don't worry...I won't use the "B" word here. :P) Con The dystopian world. I don't get major pieces of it, but most especially Juliette's mysterious power. If toxins or radiation changed her, then a) why doesn't she know this? b) why aren't others affected, and since we eventually learned that there are others affected, c) how come Juliette didn't know that? Was she the only mutant when her powers first cropped up? If so, how come she wasn't globally famous as a lone freak? I dunno, there were just questions about the world around her and how it came to be. For those of you who've read many of my reviews, you KNOW this is my most frequent howl (bugaboo, frustration, obsession...choose your own term) It derives from my love of science-fiction. (DON'T use the word "hard" science-fiction with me, please...see my last post on this topic.) I don't care if the explanation someone gives for things (ummm, for example, the near end-of-the-world) is mostly fantastical, as long as there IS one. In Shatter Me, Mafi gives us nearly zero in the way of explanation for the post-apocalyptic backdrop. Why aren't there birds anymore? Did they all die or just mutate? What about plants? Are they all gone? How do people survive? Is this all over the world or just certain areas? She starts to give you crumbs at the end, so I think perhaps she'll tell us more in the next books, but for now, I am left with too little information to really PICTURE Juliette's world and life. Pro Adam is properly dreamy, hunky, and devoted. And if you believe him, then he's also a rare sensitive, kind, loving person in a horrific world. Con I feel attached to Juliette but not as much to Adam. I kept thinking, "This guy is a liar or something. He can't just be the awesomest, hottest guy ever who's been in love with her for her whole life only she didn't know it. Can he?" I never trusted him. AND the "insta-love" thing was tough for me too. These two were in school together for years, formed an unspoken attachment despite not really interacting, and then only three years later, they don't really remember each other? Or they do? It was a bit confusing. I like to see relationships build. Also, I started to get annoyed with the whole "sex interrupted" thing that was going on. The make-out scenes were pretty steamy (pro), but they were always cut short (con), and were sometimes a little too poetic for me...drinking each other in and such. I'm not a romance reader generally so that feel isn't for me. MANY readers LOVE that kind of thing, but I like a little more I don't know...kind of realism or detail in love scenes. I want less drinking each other in and more of where the lips or hands or teeth are at any given moment. But that's just me. The thing that did kind of kill me in the end was the way Juliette was basically begging Adam to ahem, take it all the way, and then they just never got to do that. She keeps being like, "I'm not telling you to stop," but then you don't get the sex scene. Teasing I guess, but I ended up being kind of "over" it by time number three or so on this, so I have no idea how Adam is taking it (ha). Maybe we get the consummation in the next book. I DO applaud her for not making Juliette a prude. AND I do understand that there is a specific perspective here: Juliette CAN'T touch people, so Adam's touch is incredibly overwhelming. THAT is very cool. (Crap, my CON has wandered into PRO territory again. Darnit.) Pro The villain is interesting. Warner is not just a twisted psycho, there are some layers -- some kind of past damage. She hints at something with Warner's mother, but doesn't tell you a single thing in this book about what that secret may be. Also, like Adam, he seems to be immune to Juliette's powers. Another secret to be revealed in coming attractions, it seems. Either way, I appreciate a villain with a little flesh to him/her, rather than a flat evil portrayal. Con The villain can survive ridiculous injury somehow. This is very "Terminator" to me. Warner was shot at point-blank range (in addition to other things), and he lives through it just fine. It does make him scarier in a lot of ways, but it's very fantastical. Then again, this story morphs from one that seems a pure dystopian at first into more of a superhero tale as you reach the end. You can see why I've been tearing my hair out writing the review. I think I've figured it out... it was a very pretty and fast read. But it had too much pretty and not enough backstory/character connection for me. So in a way, something always felt like it was missing. BUT it had a ton of foreshadowing landmines built in that may be waiting to go off in the next book. Like Warner's mother. And is Adam really trustworthy? Or Kenji? Or the resistors in general? And what does the world really look like and how does it function if Juliette has been misinformed or our of the loop all this time? Summary I want to be clear that a 3.5 IS a recommendation. There are just some aspects that feel unfinished...for me. These questions interest me enough that I will definitely continue with the series. Perhaps some of my cons will come off the table as the story comes to full incarnation.

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