Review: Shatter Me By Tahereh Mafi

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
Series: Shatter Me #1
Date Published: October 2nd 2011
Publisher: HarperCollin
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Goodreads 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.

This book surprised me a lot. Shatter Me is a beautifully written novel about a dying dystopian society where humans didn’t take a good enough care of our world.

The story follows a young Juliette that has a curse gift where she can kill someone just by touching them. I have never heard of anything close to this idea and I think it’s absolutely amazing! A lot of books nowadays have a lot of contact in them; especially romance books where the first little feather like touch is important to any of the characters relationships. This gift that Juliette has rules it out almost; as the girl has never touched anybody without hurting them. She has never hugged her own mother or father, she never had a bestfriend that would hold her when she was upset and she never had a boyfriend because she would kill him. It’s so sad and beautiful at the same time. I mean imagine if that were you. I can’t even begin to imagine what would be like to never feel someone else’s skin.

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.” 

:’)

Juliette touched someone 264 days before the Reestablishment locked her up for murder. She hasn’t touched anyone, spoken to anyone in 264 days until a boy is thrown into her cell- a boy named Adam whom she has a history with already. After a few weeks Juliette is then taken to a facility where a highly disturbing guy named Warner wants to use her and her gift as a weapon and is strangely obsessed with her.

While I was reading this I was confused as to why these random events would lead to her meeting Warner, but as the book progresses you can see exactly what is happening and why.

I loved this book, the story was great, the dystopian world was great although somewhat confusing, and the writing was great- but it was annoying at times.

The reason for it being annoying.

1)     The repetition. At first I loved the emphasis of the white bird which meant freedom for Juliette. I loved the fact that it was repeated three times. But the random words halfway through the sentences sentences sentences. It was annoying annoying annoying. There was no use for it. Halfway through the book I thought that my book was faulty and that the words weren’t meant to be there!

2)     The strikethroughs I loved at the beginning. It was a way of Juliette to get her thoughts out and it would be crossed out like this.  What Mafi did was rather clever. But again it got rather boring and annoying at times. I loved hearing what Juliette thought but there were long sentences that were crossed out and it’s annoying to read.

Those are the only things that annoyed me the most about this book. There were certain metaphors that made absolutely no sense to me and I have a feeling Mafi only included them to sound sophisticated and poetic. But I’m going to let this slide.

“Killing time isn't as difficult as it sounds.

I can shoot a hundred numbers through the chest and watch them bleed decimal points in the palm of my hand. I can rip the numbers off a clock and watch the hour hand tick tick tick its final tock just before I fall asleep. I can suffocate seconds just by holding my breath. I've been murdering minutes for hours and no one seems to mind.” 

I mentioned already that the world that Mafi created was confusing but that I loved it nevertheless. The reason why it was so confusing was because MAFI FAILED TO EXPLAIN IT. I mostly guessed that all of their foods and resources run out and that the atmosphere and the weather fucked up but honestly I have no clue why; my educated guess would be that humans fucked up and let the world get ruined by using up everything and not caring enough for our planet. But I wish that Mafi explained this. It was almost not thought out.

Juliette’s power is great. She can touch someone and kill them. But again there was no explanation why she had the said power and why the hell she enjoyed using it. Warner the sick little puppy made her touch one of his soldiers as a way for her to show that she was powerful so they wouldn’t underestimate her. But when she touched the soldier she got a weird kick out of it. She liked it. Is this some weird sexual thing? Cause it sure seemed like it.

“Why are you touching me? 
Because I can.” 

There is an exception to Juliette’s gift, and that’s Adam. He can touch her and not die or scream out in pain and she doesn’t get a weird kick out of it. Well scratch the last bit because in some scenes she does. I actually rolled my eyes at this bit. I’m glad the two love birds can touch each other up but wouldn’t this be great if they couldn’t?! If Adam still loved Juliette even though she could kill him!!!? Am I the only person that thinks this would be a much better idea for their little romance?!!?!?!?!?!?1??!?!?!?1??!?!?!