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Shatter Me (Shatter Me #1) by Tahereh Mafi | Review

3:21:00 AM

Pages: 338 pages

Publication Date: October 2nd 2012

Publisher: HarperCollins

ISBN: 0062085506 (ISBN13: 9780062085504)

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.

Now, What I Thought:

The writing style really intrigued me to keep on going with this book. It was almost like Juliette's mind was a diary and we were reading her scribbled notes and new ideas and aspirations. It was very cool and different from most novels, so that was one thing that really struck out to me. Tahereh Mafi definitely knows how to rip your heart out and shove back in while telling her story because this was absolutely touching and heartbreaking and the text really did connect with with me. As you could expect, Juliette starts off the book in a very dank and sad place mentally and physically. This dystopia world was cool to learn about considering humans are basically at the end of their leashes and are finally running out of earth's recourses, which many have actually predicted would happen. It almost had a 'realness' (?) to it and the text made it seem possible that this is what the world could come to... you know, except with magic bit.

Again, like I said before, you really do feel for Juliette because what happens physically to her affects her mentally and it's not easy living in a killer body, legit. Basically, all human contact with Juliette will kill the other person, as simple as it sounds. She's been in isolation and captivity from an unknown source for so long that she almost forgets about the other living humans on the outside. I loved the romance in this book. Mafi literally took the impossible and made it possible! She totally went into a different and twisted way with the romance and it was very much unexpected! Talk about a shock. When I was starting to figure out what exactly Mafi was doing with these characters I almost couldn't believe it because it was such a risky move to create that type of love. Yet, Mafi pulled it off and made me fall in love with some characters I didn't think I would in this first book.

This book was very well-written and mature that it didn't even feel like a YA paranormal dystopia romance you know? I was really impressed by this book and this series, in fact. It will be on my favourites for a while because the story about Juliette is just breathtaking and heartbreaking all at the same time!