Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
Publisher: HarperTeen
Released: 15th November 2011
Rating: 1/5

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.

In this electrifying debut, Tahereh Mafi presents a world as riveting as The Hunger Games and a superhero story as thrilling as The X-Men. Full of pulse-pounding romance, intoxicating villainy, and high-stakes choices, Shatter Me is a fresh and original dystopian novel—with a paranormal twist—that will leave readers anxiously awaiting its sequel.

My thoughts:

Before I start, I want to say one thing: I preordered this. I have probably preordered about....5 books in my life. The last one was City of Fallen Angels. Before that it was Last Sacrifice. So you see, a preorder is a big deal for me. I expected a lot from this.

And it was probably one of the worst books I have ever read, ever.

The amount of purple prose in this book is truly, truly outstanding. I am amazed that someone could possibly write this way for so long. Now, I am a big fan of purple prose usually. I adore some beautiful, flowery language, but this was too far. It felt so false, so purposeful and it got my back up immediately. There was no need for there to be a similie/metaphor every other sentence.  Don't even get me started on all the crossings out. They made me want to rip out the pages and eat them. I hated them.  


Juliette was possibly the most pathetic main character I have ever come across. I mean yes, she had a rubbish childhood, and yes, she'd been locked in a room with no human contact for a year but did that really give her permission to be so whiny? She just whined and cried and stumbled her way through this entire book. Her treatment hadn't made her strong, it made her useless. She wasn't a fighter, she wasn't resilient she was ludicrous. Her only strength was not giving into Warner straight away, and that's about the only redeemable thing that I can find about her.


Adam was almost as bad. He had no personality at all, it didn't help that their 'romance' was all done off stage. It was just thrown at you, you were forced to accept that This Is How They Feel About Each Other. No proof, no build up, no nothing. Their gushy exchanges made me want to throw up. I actually found myself liking Warner in reaction because at least he was complex and interesting and layered, even if he was despicable.


Plot-wise, not much seemed to happen, and when it did it was all so convenient. There just happened to be something at this point to help them, that just happened to happen, this just happened to happen etc. It was a bunch of not very realistic coincidences strung together. 


I can see WHY so many people enjoyed it, I thought *I* would enjoy it but I just couldn't.