Book Review: Shatter Me

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.
*Copied and pasted from Goodreads. 

Title of Book: Shatter Me
Author of Book: Tahereh Mafi

Date of Publication: 15 November 2011
Publisher: Harper

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Who Recommended it to Me: I was drawn in by the cover. 
Who I'd Recommend it To: People who like dystopia, romance, and a different kind of writing

My Review:


2.5 stars. I didn't feel like rounding up.

Shatter Me is not a book I'll be forgetting any time soon, for good or for bad it's hard to tell.

I'm all for metaphors and similes. I use them often in writing. They make the page burst with color and uniqueness. It makes the book fun and interesting to read. But this book? Well, let's just say that they were overdone, and most of them made no sense whatsoever. Can I give you a few examples? Pretty please with a cherry on top? Oh, yes! Let me quote you, Shatter Me !

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

Um, what? I mean, yeah, an upside down rainbow is pretty wrong, but please, can we just think about that for a second? When have I ever in my lifetime considered an upside down rainbow? It's not even a thing . Tahereh Mafi could have at least said something that made sense.

He's a hot bath, a short breath, 5 days of summer pressed into 5 fingers writing stories on my body...His scent is assaulting my senses." (page 208)

He's a...hot bath? Juliette is comparing Adam's fingers to days of summer? Did I read that wrong? I can't say anything else besides this.

Another thing. At the very end of the book, when Adam says Juliette looks like a sexy superhero (which was a very unfortunate ending) Juliette says she feels tingly. Being called a sexy superhero makes her feel tingly? What? Am I missing something? A freakin SUPERHERO? Why not "princess"? Why not plain old beautiful?

I actually didn't mind the strikethrough text. I actually thought it was pretty cool. Sometimes it would get frustrating because you'd wonder, "Does she really mean that or does she mean the thing that's crossed off?" All in all, though, it was pretty cool. But I didn't like how she would repeat words over and over again, and some of them would be crossed out but others wouldn't be. It caused unecessary confusion and the meaning would have been the same thing to me if there was just one word. And Juliette as a character annoyed me. She sounded like she was five when she was talking.

There were a lot of things I liked, despite these annoyances. Adam was sexy and I wish he was real. Too bad he was in love with Juliette, because I didn't like her at all. I also liked Kenji and Adam's little brother, James. James was cute and realistic and totally what you'd expect a 10-year-old boy to sound like. Also, the writing style was different and unique even if she did go over the top sometimes.

So I'd recommend Shatter Me if you're looking for something completely different from anything you've ever read, but still like the traditional dystopia read. I might try to write something with strikethrough text come to think of it, but use it in a slightly different way. All around, it was just an average read, but I think some people would enjoy it.