Ignite Me

This book is a joke.I guess I finally have to come to terms with the fact that the Shatter Me series was never going to be what I wanted to be. Sure, Juliette gets where I wanted her to go. She has the power of the gods, she deserves nothing less than a pedestal and complete and utter devotion. But that doesn't mean the road there wasn't clunky, dull and profoundly pointless.If you're worried about Mafi's trademark bizarre prose, don't be. There's only a few awkward metaphors to be found, and no crossouts whatsoever. You know why that is? Because the vast majority of the text in this book exists between quotation marks. First, its Warner explaining to Juliette what kind of person he really is, and then Juliette regurgitates everything he said for Kenji, and then Juliette and Adam talk about their increasingly troubled feelings for eachother, and then they do it again, and again, and then Warner and Juliette talk about their feelings for each other, and then Juliette talks about all her feelings to Kenji....I swear to god, this is the entire book. Big hulking paragraphs of characters rambling. For the love of god, you want to say something, then show me! I am completely flabbergasted at how amateur this is. This isn't a novel! There's no story, there's no driving action, there's no actual conflict, the characters are so empty Mafi can swap out their personalities and backgrounds as she sees fit, the setting wouldn't withstand a sneeze its so thin. This is nothing but indulgent navel gazing. It's fangirly, over-the-top emotional masturbation.Believe it or not there are enjoyable parts to this, but only so much as a back of a cereal box can be informative. The relationship between Juliette and Warner is a patient, well-written story of two people who are totally right for each other. If you can blindly accept fact that suddenly a guy who came from a horribly abusive background and spent the past couple of years committing atrocities against humanity can suddenly shape into a loving and supportive boyfriend. The interactions between Juliette and Kenji are also adorable and heartfelt - if they weren't squashed in between Juliette's endless relatioship angst, they might actually mean something. Though I am genuinely happy Adam got finally called out for what he is - a fucking predator. A lot of fans are crying foul over Adam's supposed personality transplant, that all of a sudden he became this angry selfish person who doesn't appreciate Juliette for who and what she truly is. Newsflash kids, he's always been like this. I actually wrote about it way back when I first read Shatter Me. Did Mafi go way overboard demonizing him so that she could make room to glorify Warner? Hell yeah, she did. But at least it was somewhat consistent with what she set up in the first book.But the truth is, Mafi could have done anything with Adam's character. Or Warner's. Or Juliette's. She could have decided that Warner was actually an alien trying to brainwash everyone to join his hive, or that Adam really just wanted to run off and become a trapeze artist, and it would have worked. Because there was nothing there in the first place. The fact that Ignite Me spends so much time literally talking about who these people are and what they want tells me that Mafi just doesn't know how to show it organically through plot and conflict. Which should be, ya know, a basic thing that a writer knows how to do marginally well.I enjoyed [b:Unravel Me 13104080 Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2) Tahereh Mafi https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1340287622s/13104080.jpg 18276967] for its sheer high powered camp, but even that requires something to actually happen. The plot in Ignite Me doesn't actually show up until perhaps the last fifty pages or so, and its sloppily done and boring. There are a few opportunities to create an interconnected story with some shred of depth, but they are completely lost. The villain is hardly given any thought, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't even have any lines at all. His only purpose is to look cowardly and give Juliette something to step over on her way to glory. The plot as it turns out is just an afterthought to what is in fact a fairly generic romance. I thought about giving this two stars because if that is in fact what you're looking for, if you don't mind paying $15 for something you could probably get on fanfiction.net, then yeah I guess this is ok. But in terms of what should be the raw quality of an actual bonafide published book, I cannot in good conscious say this is anything more than bullshit.

I have to say, throughout the first two books, Juliette was not my favorite protagonist ever. I didn't hate her by any means, but while I loved her voice (because Tahereh Mafi has the most gorgeous prose I've basically ever read), I didn't particularly love all of Juliette's decisions or her outlook.

That being said, Juliette's development from first book to last is incredible. This series easily has some of the most nuanced, dramatic and yet believable character development you'll find out there (so, for YA writers, this is a fabulous example of how to do character development right. Seriously).

What I also loved about the conclusion to this trilogy is that it didn't end anything like I expected it to. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just refer back to the character development note, but that's really what resonated with me so strongly.

The only gripe I have is that I felt climax came and went a tad bit too quickly, but honestly, I loved the book far too much to really care.

So that about covers it! If you like fast-paced YA with fabulous character development and a truly unique and beautiful voice, I highly recommend this series. I loved every book and look forward to more of Mafi's work.