Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Shatter Me (Shatter Me #1) by Tahereh Mafi
Synopsis (Goodreads):

"You can't touch me," I whisper.

I'm lying, is what I don't tell him.

He can touch me, is what I'll never tell him.

But things happen when people touch me.

Strange things.

Bad things.

No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon.

But Juliette has plans on her own.

After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever.

My Thoughts: Wow. This book is beautiful in its imagery -- sad, heartbreaking, lonely, fractured in a way that makes it all the more poignant. Living for 264 days in complete isolation has pulled Juliette deep into her mind. She counts, she fragments, she comes back, she dreams of the freedom she might find beyond the walls of her prison. She hides truths from herself and she's dying by slow degrees. Then Adam is placed in her cell and she begins to function again. It's a slow process but she unthaws a bit at a time as she remembers what it's like to be spoken to and treated like something with a heartbeat.

Juliette's mind fascinated me. From her first jumbled thoughts to the thoughts she censored as soon as she thought them, she captured my attention. The way she desperately clung to the idea that she wasn't insane even as she doubted it. The way her memories slowly crept up on her. The way her loneliness screamed through her every action. Juliette's world is one of pain and hunger and fear and somehow she's managed to keep on existing -- even when she doesn't want to.

I adored Adam. He broke my heart several times over the course of this book. Then the reasons behind his actions were revealed and I was smitten all over again. On the other hand, don't know how I feel about Warner. He's power-mad but there feels like there's so much more to his story. Is he redeemable? Does he want to be redeemed? I don't know. I want to just flat-out hate him and at times I did. Then there were those flashes of something that made him almost human and those are the moments that I wanted see more of.

I devoured this book. I read it in one sitting. Literally. I didn't get up once and I couldn't put the book down. Juliette and Adam are stuck in my head and I want more of them. Oddly enough, I want more Warner, too. I just want more of this whole world.

Books in this series
1. Shatter Me - Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle
1.5. Destroy Me
2. Unravel Me

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