Review: Shatter Me

Author: Tahereh Mafi
Publish date: November 2011
Source: won in a contest
"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. "

I won this novel in a Facebook contest and read it over a few days while I was on vacation in Washington, D.C. (pictures to come soon!). I ended up liking Shatter Me a lot, even though it was difficult for me to get into at first.

One of the first things I noticed about Shatter Me was the distinct writing style. The story is told from Juliette's point of view and some of the writing was really distracting, but I eventually got used to it. Since the narrative is from her viewpoint, we got to read exactly what she was thinking: sometimes the words repeated and lines were even crossed out, which I have never seen in a book before. It took a bit to get used to, but I ended up thinking that the writing style added a lot to the story. It was interesting to see how the writing changed as Juliette's living situation changed as well.


Another aspect of Shatter Me that I liked was the characters. I thought Juliette was a well-developed character (although she said a few things that surprised me) and holy moley, do I love Adam. I'll just say that he's pretty awesome. The supporting characters were all great too: Warner, James, Kenji. They all influenced the story and weren't just there for kicks.


I believe that Shatter Me is supposed to be the first in a trilogy, but it can really stand on its own. I'm excited to see where the story is going, but I honestly would not have known it was part of a trilogy if I hadn't just checked Tahereh Mafi's website. It was an interesting, fast-paced, and edgy, if I may say that, dystopian (with a side of paranormal?) that I really enjoyed!