Welcome to week #1 of my month long review of the “Shatter Me” series by Tahereh Mafi!
How on God’s green earth had I never picked this book up? “Shatter Me” by Tahereh Mafi was released in 2012, and somehow four years (FOUR YEARS!) passed in ignorance. Yes, I had heard it was a best-seller, yes it had been in my Goodreads cue for a hundred years and a day. But did that make me pick it up? No. Because I lack brain cells, apparently. If you get ANYTHING from this review, please let it be the urgency that you must (must must) pick this book up right now! Okay. Rant over. Read on for the review.
Synopsis:
I have a curse I have a gift
I am a monster I’m more than human
My touch is lethal My touch is power
I am their weapon I will fight back
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.
The Review: 5 stars out of 5!!
Okay, I’m not going to go on and on (and on and on and on) about how unique and incredible her writing style is. What you can’t get from the synopsis is that this girl is a poet. Her words don’t tell a story, they make you live that story. Every single page of this book had multiple lines that were so perfect, I wanted to copy them and paste them around my room. But then, of course, my house wouldn’t be big enough to hold all those wonderful words that Tahereh Mafi had put together. So, let’s leave it that her writing style alone will make you swoon and beg for more. Done.
Now on to the actual story: Juliette has a gift/curse. She has never known the touch of another person, for fear of killing them. Rejected by her family, friends and society, her entire life screams lonely. Is she crazy? Is she sane? These questions plague her on a daily basis. When a new cellmate–Adam–joins her, it takes everything inside her not to share her deepest thoughts. But then she and Adam are taken to a branch of the Reestablishment, and she’s asked to do what every cell of her body has begged her entire life not to do. Warner, the leader of that department, shows more interest in her than her special powers alone, and for the first time in her life she’s thankful no one can touch her. Can she resist the evil of the new world? Will she be a prisoner forever?
I won’t say anything more, for fear of too many spoilers. But, really guys, you have to read this! Yes, this is YA dystopian. Yes, there have been a lot of books written in this genre. And yes, this is one that you cannot live without reading! If you add any new books to your 2017 reading list, be sure you add the “Shatter Me” series. So that you don’t hate yourself like I did for having waited so long.
There you have it!
Happy reading, friends!
(“Shatter Me” by Tahereh Mafi is a YA dystopian novel with mild language and some suggested sexual encounters. Appropriate for older teens and young adults.)
