Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: November 15th 2011
Cover Love: 9/10

Goodreads: 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.

My Review:

Shatter Me is just wow. Mafi’s writing is so enchanting; I was completely captivated by it. It’s easily become my all-time favourite book of 2012 and I’d recommend it to everyone. 

The characters are all very well developed. I enjoyed reading about Juliette, she’s a girl who has the ability/power to kill people by just touching them. Adam is the love interest and I fell in love with him myself. The characters in Shatter Me are by no means perfect characters at all, they all have their own faults and weaknesses and are very realistic. I also kind of liked Warner.. Please tell me I’m not the only one! There’s just something about him that’s intriguing and magnetic, he’s a very troubled character although his background hasn’t been revealed yet, so it’ll be especially interesting to read about that in the next one –hopefully if it’s in there because I would love to know.

I’ve seen that some people are not too fond of the strike through style of the writing, but I really enjoyed it. It made Juliette feel much more real, as if she was thinking different things and not saying them out loud, as we’ve all done. She’s a very broken character to read about and I truly loved reading from her perspective. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be completely ostracised by humanity and by your own parents. I love how much she evolved over time from the beginning of the novel to the end; she becomes almost a whole other person.

The plot was really interesting. It kept me hooked all the way through and there wasn’t a point where I genuinely wanted to put it down because I was bored. There’s a real mix of suspense, action and romance, it’s a great mixture that swept me along. I cannot wait for Unravel Me; it’s going to be so exciting, especially with all the new characters that we meet near the end of the book. I didn’t expect half of the twists and turns that happened, this book constantly kept me on my toes.

I’ve seen a lot of people say that they are not too fond of all the metaphors used, but I absolutely adored them. The way she described some of the scenes with Adam were just so great, “He leaves less than a foot of space between us and I'm 10 inches away from spontaneous combustion” and“He's a hot bath, a short breath, five days of summer pressed into five fingers writing stories on my body.” They really capture the intense feeling of the scenes –especially one of my favourite bits, which involves a bit of shower kissing :D 

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book. It’s so so good and I want no, need the next book so bad! Shatter Me has everything that you could want in a book, romance, action, suspense and some really great characters.

5 out of 5 stars.