Saturday, December 10, 2011

Shatter Me by Tehereh Mafi


Title: Shatter Me
Author: Tehereh Mafi
Publisher: Harper Teen
Reading Level: YA, 14+
Publication Date: November 15, 2011
Pages: 338
My Edition: Hardcover
GoodReads

Cover Rating: C+
Book Rating: B

Plot - 16/20
Characters - 17/20
Writing - 18/20
Originality - 18/20
Entertainment - 8/10
Recommendation - 8/10
Total: 85/100

Summary:
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. 
Review:
SHATTER ME is a very quick and easy read, but it’s also a very unique book because of Mafi’s interesting and enjoyable new writing style. I really enjoyed most of the novel and I think SHATTER ME will, in turn, make a great series. SHATTER ME is novel that has been hyped about for a long while, even before its long-awaited release on November 15th. When I received this book from my library system, I was thrilled to finally start it. I had not really known what this novel was exactly about before I started it. I had just known that she had the power to kill a person just by her hands. 

When I began reading, I got just a slight view of the new world that Tehereh Mafi had created. It was very austere and sad, birds didn't even fly anymore. Juliette had been hauled up in this tiny, dark cell for nearly a year. She hadn't spoken in nearly a year (can you even imagine not speaking for a year?), hadn't touched anybody or been touched for even longer than that. She was alone in the asylum, but she had been alone for a long while before she was locked up. That was before Adam came into the picture. Everything changed when Adam entered her life again, for good and for bad.

Tehereh Mafi has a very fascinating writing style. It made the reading experience quite different and entertaining. Her writing style made the tone of the book very dissimilar and extraordinary. The one set back of the novel, is the pace of the novel. It was too fast; I never got enough time to connect with certain aspects of the novel. I would have loved the book to be another hundred pages or so if there was more time explaining the Reestablishment and longer periods of time where Adam and Juliette where alone together, I think that would have made the novel even better. 

SHATTER ME is a very quick and easy read, but it’s also a very unique book because of Mafi’s interesting and enjoyable new writing style. I really enjoyed most of the novel and I think SHATTER ME will, in turn, make a great series. 

1 comment:

  1. I really loved Shatter Me. Mafi's writing is AMAZING, but you're so right, the book was so fast, and it kind of went by in a blur.

    I'm really interested to see where series goes, too. Shatter Me seemed really rather internal. Most of it was inside Juliette's head, rather than external events and action... she's dealt with a lot of her issues now, though, so it'll be interesting to see if the next book has a bit more action?

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