Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Oh boy. Get ready for a rough ride. Where to even start. I hated I hated I hated the writing. I don’t know why why why it was necessary to repeat everything everything everything a million times. The strikethroughs didn’t make me want to burn the book didn’t bother me nearly as much as the writing did and I can’t I can’t I can’t understand why anyone in their right mind would write so annoyingly it was written like that.

Now, if you made it through the paragraph above and didn’t want to stab out your eyeballs or quit reading, good for you, you might be able to make it through Shatter Me, because that’s exactly how it’s written. Lots of repetition and lots of strikethroughs. I hated it. Shatter Me is about a girl named Juliette who is locked up in an asylum because her touch can kill. Literally. She hasn’t talked or touched anyone in almost a year after accidentally killing someone. Shortly after we meet Juliette, we meet Adam – another prisoner who is put in her cell. Adam updates her on their dystopian world, and she learns that The Reestablishment is stronger than ever, and that people are wanting to rebel against them. Juliette’s power of being able to kill someone with her touch could prove very useful to them…

So I have to just preface this and say that I feel awful writing this review, because I had a LOT of problems with the book. That said, the book’s average rating on Goodreads is 4.02 with over 180,000 ratings, so I am clearly in the minority and you should take this review with a grain of salt.

I won’t spend a ton more time talking about the writing style, because I already did, and I don’t want to harp on it. I think you get the point. I do want to mention one other thing about the writing before I move on. The sentences and METAPHORS. They were so over the top that some of them didn’t make sense. They were SO flowery. Here are a few examples:

“I can shoot a hundred numbers through the chest and watch them bleed decimal points in the palm of my hand. I can rip the numbers off a clock and watch the hour hand tick tick tick its final tock just before I fall asleep. I can suffocate seconds just by holding my breath. I’ve been murdering minutes for hours and no one seems to mind.”

“I realize I’m paying attention to nothing but the dandelions blowing wishes in my lungs.”

“I’m caught in colliding currents of confusion, so desperate so desperate so desperate to be close so desperate to be far away.”

Oy. It was rough to get through it, I’m not going to lie – I thought this might have been my first DNF in a really long time. Okay, moving on from the writing.

There were a few other things I had an issue with. One was the world building. Well, the lack of world building anyway. I felt like we were really thrown into the world without any real explanation of how it got there and why. I didn’t like that. I kept waiting for it to be explained, but it just never was.

Next, there was definitely some insta-love happening with Adam and Juliette. It felt like it was missing the natural progression of things, and it went from 0-100 in like, 2.47 seconds.

SO now that I’ve ranted a LOT, I do want to say a few positive things. Number one: I did like the characters fault. While I hated the writing, I liked Juliette and I liked Adam, and wanted to know what was going to happen to them. I’ve heard that the books get better after the first one, so I’m really torn on whether or not I want to read them. Is the writing the same as it was in the first book? Someone help me out!

Next, there was one quote in the book that I LOVED which was “I spent my life folded between the pages of books” which might be the most relatable quote from any book ever. I loved it so much that I actually bought a phone case with the quote on it from Evie Seo’s Society 6 store. You can find it HERE if you’re interested! (Look how pretty!)

Alright, so this may have been the longest review I’ve ever written, BUT I felt like it was important to be totally honest with my thoughts on the book given how many 5 star reviews it has. I figured there should be a minority opinion in there somewhere. Anyway, if you loved the book, I’m sorry I didn’t! It just wasn’t for me. I thought about giving it one stars, but since I did like the characters, I decided to give it two stars instead. But just barely.

SO what do you think? Have you read the book? If so, what were your thoughts?