Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Genre: Ya | dystopian
Series: Shatter Me #1
Goodreads rating: 4.03
My rating: ★★★★

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 (Goodreads).

What I liked most about Shatter Me is the writing style. It’s so beautiful, poetic and unique. The plot though, not so much.

This is going to be a rather short review since I don’t have that much to say about the book, but I thought the plot was a bit boring until the end (that definitely saved the book! I can’t wait to see how it plays out). It focused too much on the romance for my taste. I mean, Juliette’s touch is fatal, which is a really awesome premise. I certainly didn’t expect that most of the book would be about the romance. Also I’m not the biggest fan of it. It just felt really rushed to me. Spoilerish: I know they already knew each other, but that’s when they were kids. They hadn’t seen each other in years and I would’ve liked to see the romance develop a little bit slower.

I’m also not really sure how I feel about the characters. They all feel a bit dull to me (except Kenji. I swear if he dies in one of sequels I’m going to throw a tantrum. You can not kill off the one character I actually like). I hope to see them develop into more three-dimensional and memorable characters.

So while I felt like not much happened and the characters felt a bit bland to me, the writing style is beautiful enough and the end promised an interesting series.

Have you read Shatter Me? I feel like I’m one of the last people to read this series haha. What do you think about it? Let me know in the comments! 

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