Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1)

I may be a little optimistic, or a total softie, but I think that Shatter Me is great in concept and ambitious in vision. It's just very poorly executed. There have been a handful of books that I've read in the past couple of years that I was rather alarmed that they actually made it to book shelves in the state they're in. This is definitely one of them.Mafi invents a character - the painfully isolated Juliette Ferrars, a girl with a lethal touch - but very little else. Shatter Me is only a dystopian in the sense that stuff is just bad, ok, and then some guys called The Reestablishment somehow convinced everyone to leave behind everything they believe in and everything that makes them who they are based on a flimsy promise to make things better. Typically an absence of conviction or belief is not what gets the world into messes like this.Pretty much everyone has put in their two cents about the prose styling, so I'll get that out of the way: It didn't bother me that much, not directly. Aesthetically, its rather pleasing, but I think it hampered a lot of the important elements of the story. Yes, Mafi is definitely trying way too hard, and being that she's a young debut author I'm not begrudging her much for it. The main issue is that the prose was just not grounded. While verbose, it wasn't actually descriptive because often times it wasn't actually describing anything. It's not evocative, as my college poetry professor would say. It didn't make me feel anything.And sometimes it actually conflicted with the action. The page was so filled up with metaphors that I actually had a hard time discerning what was going on. Actually, the action itself was often confusing – she sits up when she had already sat up a couple paragraphs ago, he grabs her shoulders when I thought he was sitting across the table from her. Moments like this kept up on popping up and it made it impossible to fully get engrossed in the story.Generally, everyone's motivations and actions had me scratching my head. Everything is so cartoonish and over the top, every time Adam melodramatically confesses his love or Juliette gasps for no apparent reason I couldn't even roll my eyes it was just so bewildering. I know this is an extreme situation and they're young and impulsive or something, but who in the hell are these people?The only thing that really made sense in this context was Warner. In this strange fairytale world of flimsy world building and melodrama, Warner was exactly the flourishing, rabid villain that was needed. It was like he knew the type of role he was supposed to play and did it with mouth-frothing enthusiasm. Even so, Warner, like Adam and Juliette, had very little opportunity to actually show what he's made of. There's a lot of explaining of who these characters are, but very little showing. Adam has to tell us about what a good person Juliette is, he also tells about Warner's mommy issues (there is an attempt to display this organically, it's awful, like laughably awful). The only visceral, emotional thing that Shatter Me was good at evoking was lust. Compared to most YA that simply talks about “electricity” between two characters, Shatter Me is downright erotic. Adam and Juliette go at each other pretty enthusiastically, and without much sentiment or scruples. Being that this is a story based around the ability to touch, sexuality has a really big part. However, it also led to a really big problem I had with the story, and a rather curious element that I'm not sure was intentional or not on Mafi's part.Juliette is referred to as an object so many times I started keeping track. And then I lost track. My body is a carnivorous flower, a poisonous houseplant, a loaded gun with a million triggers and he's more than ready to fire.Ha, objectification as well as sexual connotation. Here's a prime example from Warner himself -“It's very fortunate you're not battery operated.”He may try to delude himself about it later, but Warner wants her to be the object to his subject, the weapon for his movement, even though he may dress it up as a means of empowering her (he may even believe it himself, which is one of things that makes him interesting to me). However, things don't get any better with Adam. Almost every time he and Juliette make contact, it's him touching her. And the prose is so intense, so violent that, to put it bluntly, it read like he was molesting her. He's everywhere up my back and over my arms and suddenly he's kissing me harder, deeper, with a fervent urgent need I've never known before. He breaks for air only to bury his lips in my neck, along my collarbone up my chin and cheeks and I'm gasping for oxygen and he's destroying me with his hands and we're drenched in water and beauty and the exhilaration of a moment I never knew was possible.I've been going through a process of making myself more aware of the fetishization of dominance in our culture, and how it is not as natural as we're led to believe. It may be just that my education has come to a point where I no longer enjoy these kinds of things like I used to, but honestly I think Shatter Me is just a glaring example. It's embedded in the very language that Mafi uses, it's in the freaking title itself. But I'm going to try to stop myself before this review gets out of a hand, because I want to write about this more at length once I read [b:Destroy Me 13623150 Destroy Me (Shatter Me, #1.5) Tahereh Mafi http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1340398466s/13623150.jpg 19226840]. (Oh hey, look, I did.)I will say that I think Juliette's sexuality is an important element in this novel, because it is inextricably linked to her ability. Her relationship to touch defines how she engages with other people and how strongly her bonds develop with them. It's hard to believe that an ordinary woman would feel such sudden sexual tension with these two men, but in the context of Juliette who can only touch no one but these two men it makes a bit more sense. It seems convenient for story telling purposes that her two love interest are touchable, but really we should be looking at it the other way around. They are love interests because they're touchable.However, I think Mafi was not entirely complete, for a lack of a better term, in expanding on Juliette's relationship to touch. Here is another instance where the metaphors got in the way. In order to properly express how Juliette feels about essentially losing one of her five senses, the description has to be grounded, it has to be represented by words that the reader can relate to, because touch, particularly the ability to touch other people, is a huge part of how we relate to the world. I think Mafi got a little carried away with the cerebral nature of Juliette's instability and didn't take enough time with the physical.Perhaps it's because this is a young adult book, which leads me to think again that this concept was just too big for this type of story. Juliette's sexuality is a huge part of making this portrait fuller, and the ability to flesh that out might have been hampered by the target age group. I think a big part of Juliette's development and the progression of the story as a whole is going to rely on Juliette finding agency (sexual and otherwise), and learning to flip herself from object to subject, and that is something that will come down to not just her actions and roles, but the language used to describe her.So in my strange and muddied conclusion, I guess I believe in this story and I believe in Mafi. I think there's oodles of potential here, it just was not remotely realized. There's a really big opportunity here to say something about women's agency and sexuality and I have my fingers crossed that Mafi will take it and run with it.

(Review originally posted at Fictionally Inclined.)

4.5 STARSI really did not want to start another incomplete series right now. I saw this book at Barnes & Noble the other day and was completely intrigued. I came home, looked it up, added it to my Goodreads to-read list, and let it go for the moment. Then, completely unexpectedly, I saw it on the library shelf two days ago. I picked it up last night after I finished my other book, read the first two pages, and promptly stopped because I knew I needed to go to bed and that I wouldn't for another few hours if I read any further. I then proceeded to wake up this morning and begin reading it immediately. I was completely hooked! I took a short break for lunch with friends, then came back and finished it. It was such a great read! My heart broke for Juliette a thousand times, and I held my breath and nearly cried and even laughed. I rooted for her again and again. I was enthralled in the story, and I never wanted it to end. Unfortunately, it did (thankfully, not in a cliffhanger-that-makes-me-want-to-kill-something way), and now I will be waiting on the edge of my seat for the sequel. Now, let the gushing commence!My absolutely-no-contest favorite thing about Shatter Me was the writing. I am left without adequate words when trying to describe it. It was so unique, so fresh, so lyrical and bold and stunningly, flawlessly gorgeous. I am a huge sucker for great writing, and Shatter Me had it in spades. I always write down quotes from books, but I was almost at a loss for this one. There were a few that stood out as good quotes to keep for the future. But as an example of just how amazing the writing was? I would not even know where to start. Here are two of my favorites:❝I spent my life folded between the pages of books.In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.❞This is one segment that struck me as I was flipping back through (it is only from page 8, so no worries about spoilers):❝His hand.On me.2 tipsof 2 fingers graze my cloth-covered shoulder for less than a second and every muscle every tendon in my body is fraught with tension and tied into knots that clench my spine. I stay very still. I don't move. I don't breathe. Maybe if I don't move, this feeling will last forever.No on has touched me in 264 days.Sometimes I think the loneliness inside of me is going to explode through my skin and sometimes I'm not sure if crying or screaming or laughing through the hysteria will solve anything at all. Sometimes I'm so desperate to touch to be touched to feel that I'm almost certain I'm going to fall off a cliff in an alternate universe where no one will ever be able to find me.It doesn't seem impossible.I've been screaming for years and no one has ever heard me.❞How could you not love this? I just want to read it over and over and over.One thing that seemed to bother people was the use of strike-throughs. Personally, I absolutely adore stricken text. It is a cool writing tool that can be very powerful and effective when used well. And it was used perfectly in this book. But just as a warning, if it bothers you, it is used pretty heavily toward the beginning.Warning: The rest of this review contains spoilers.*

As for the characters, I loved being inside Juliette's head. It was fascinating, though painful. One thing I feel the need to address is that she had a mentality where she had a very difficult time believing her beauty/how Adam could actually love her. However, while those traits are usually obnoxious and overused, I completely believed her in this. She had looked in a mirror one time in three years. She could not touch people without killing them. She had been ostracized and abused by every person in her life. While Adam had always been different, he had never showed her affection until the events of this book, either. Ergo, while those excused are usually trite and tired, they rang true in this story. Adam. I loved him so. His loyalty and love made my heart happy. I am interested in his power. At first, I thought it was a bit of a cop out. I wanted to know how they were going to have a love story without being able to touch. But I wound up being quite okay with it. Particularly because the scenes where they did touch? Amazing. Those were often where the writing struck me the most.The love (triangle? square? pentagon?) story was so confusing! At first, I was refreshed to see a straightforward love story in a series. I figured it was too good to be true, and we were just waiting for the third point of the triangle to appear. And I was right. Warner showed up, and I figured it was him. But then he was completely insane and utterly evil. There might still be something there, especially since he is able to touch her? But I wouldn't think so; it also makes him a more formidable enemy, able to threaten Juliette in a more personal way. A while after Warner, I thought it was going to be Kenji. Then Brendan seemed like an obvious choice. Then Kenji was mentioned again in a way that seemed to make it possible. So confusing! I do like that it isn't a straight up love triangle, at least at this point in time. It is a tad maddening, though. In a good way. For the most part. At the moment, I am still rooting for her and Adam, and it would take a lot to threaten that. On the other hand, I am the queen of multishipping as of late. I am particularly intrigued by Brendan, but I don't know if I like the idea of romance between him and Juliette. Time will tell.

I will leave you with a quote.

❝”So why won't you tell me your name?” He leans forward and I freeze.

I thaw.

I melt. “Juliette,” I whisper. “My name is Juliette.”

His lips soften into a smile that cracks apart my spine.❞

♥

I have a curse.I HAVE A GIFT.I'm a monster.I'M MORE THAN HUMAN.My touch Is lethal.MY TOUCH IS POWER.I am their weapon.I WILL FIGHT BACK

It's hard to pin point the biggest problem with “Shatter Me” because there are just so many things wrong with this book. Reading this was mostly like eating a cake so sweet that it burns your throat and makes your eyes water.

First of all, there's barely a dystopian tale to discover. The setting for the scary futuristic environment is weak and superficial. The dystopian elements exist only as a cover for the romance, which is was this really is. A done-a-million-times-before, stale, cookie-cutter paranormal romance. We have a weak, whinny, eternally suffering heroine, a love triangle made out of a villain who's not really a villain and the absolutely boring and humorless hero who keeps coming to the rescue of the damsel in distress. The sci-fi elements are whatever, they're there just to create a conflict that would justify the existence of the villain and of the love triangle.

This totalitarian regime that Juliette talks about with such horror is absolutely laughable. There's not way they would have managed to subdue such a large population in such an short amount of time. And the reason why the regime managed to take over was that a door had been left open by the chaos produced by the environmental disaster that ruined the entire planet. It seems everything was fine when she was a kid, then, all of a sudden the clouds changed color, the plants and animals started dying and the damage was so great that there was no point of no return. And all this in 5-10 years? Phuleeease. And then this new regime has nothing better to do than burn books and artifacts and moving people from their houses into weird compounds. Because building those didn't require resources?

Her childhood doesn't make any sense whatsoever other that it was very convenient for her parents to be these utter morons and monsters so it can be justified why Juliette is all alone. Why couldn't they just clothe her properly? With things that covered most of her body and put on some gloves on her little hand. They could've used gloves too. Even the dumbest, most uneducated people could have figured that out. Why did they hate her so much? I get that they were afraid of her but it's so unlikely that they treated her like the a disgusting rodent. And even if it would be case why wouldn't the doctors be interested in her well being taking into consideration that she was so unique? They could have stepped in and put her in the custody of the state. And then we're expected to believe that she accidentally killed that child because she just forgot about the effect of her touch, at the age of 14, after spending an entire life being unloved by her parents, being bullied by kids for this particular reason? Is she also mentally challenged? Because this is what it sounds like to me.

This book it's painfully overwritten. The author tried too hard to be clever and poetic. I was only a few pages in when I started getting annoyed by the myriad of metaphors and hyperboles. I didn't mind the strike-outs and the repetitions because they were meant to add an OCD flavor to her inner monologues. I get that we had to question whether she was insane or not. But the book was plagued with so many pointless, absolutely absurd metaphors. These were just unbearable. And it not likely at all that a girl who hadn't spoken to anyone in 3 years, who hand't read anything in 3 years, would be able to think like that.

This square courtyard could be my ballroom.I want to dance with the elements.

My heart soars and plummets at the same time.

They locked me up with a boy. A boy. Dear God. They're trying to kill me.My spine snapped in half with the pain. My stomach is a flimsy crepe, my heart a raging woodpecker, my blood a river of anxiety.

My jaw falls off. My jaw is dangling from my shoelace. My mouth is sitting on my kneecaps. I have to make a conscious effort to keep my jaw from unhinging.

Warner grips my hips and allows his hands to conquer my body. He tastes like peppermint, smells like gardenias. His arms are strong around me, his lips soft, almost sweet against my skin. There's an electric charge between us I hadn't anticipated.Let's talk about the J&A romance, shall we?. Ah, this I-want-to-scratch-my-eyes-out-romance. We have here one of the worst case of insta-love. Juliette and Adam barely know each other.They share a past together because they went to the same school, but they never actually interacted then. They just stared at each other from afar. Then they barely talked when they were in the asylum together and the same after she was released in his care. Juliette keeps changing her mind about whether he's a traitor or he's her friend. She gives in to what Warner says about Adam when he's clearly just to manipulate her into distrusting him. And then out of nowhere Adam tells her he loves her and she wants to cry and die in his arms. They spend the rest of the book having really naughty dry-humping make out sessions. Ha, and, very conveniently, Warner agrees to disable the cameras just in time for Adam to have a chance to confess his feelings and so they could enjoy the steamy moments with no audience. Yeah,right. Oh, almost forgot. How is it that everybody finds her so attractive when she supposedly spent 3 years in the asylum with not sun light, no proper hygiene and she was perpetually starved? She would have looked emaciated and extremely unhealthy. Instead, the second she's released she just needs a shower and every guy in sight wants her so badly.Some of the dialogues and inner monologues related to the “romantic” moments seem like they came straight from the cheese factoryHis hands at my waist, gripping my hips, his legs flush against my own, his chest overpowering me with strength, his frame built by bricks of desire. He chokes on a moan that turns into a kiss. My knees are knocking together and my heart is beating so fast I don't understand why it's still working. He's kissing away the pain, the hurt, the years of self-loathing, the insecurities, the dashed hopes for a future I always pictured as obsolete. He's lighting me on fire, burning away the torture of Warner's games, the anguish that poisons me every single day. The intensity of our bodies could shatter these glass walls.Adam pulls back just a tiny bit. Kisses my bottom lip. Bites it for just a second. His skin is 100 degrees hotter than it was a moment ago. His lips are pressed against my neck and my hands are on a journey down his upper body and I'm wondering why there are so many freight trains in my heart, why his chest is a broken harmonica.His heart is racing so fast I can't distinguish it from my own. It's 5,000 degrees in the air between us.I'm suddenly desperate to drink in every drop of his being, desperate to savor every moment I've never known before. I suddenly worry that there's an expiration date on this phenomenon. The possibility of losing him The possibility of losing him The possibility of losing him is 100 years of solitude I don't want to imagine. Realization is a pendulum the size of the moon. It won't stop slamming into me.His body presses closer and I realize I'm paying attention to nothing but the dandelions blowing wishes in my lungs.Overall many things were simply much too convenient: both of the love interests were immune to Juliette's curse (so she could properly make out with both of them); Juliette, Adam and Kenji were all immune to radiation which disabled the trackers; they found a car with keys in the ignition just when they were running for their lives; Kenji is a double agent that takes them to a compound where they have paranormal healers that simply erase Adam's wounds in 24 hours;Just to be clear, I'm not giving this a 1 star rating based on the writing style or because I did not gasp in awe while reading the metaphors. I would've gone past that if the characters hadn't been so horrible and there was more to the story than teenage hormones. What I can't get over is how pathetic and pitiful Juliette is, how sappy, boring and dry the romance was, and how weak the setting was for the dystopian elements. Too many inconsistencies, too many coincidences, way too disturbing relationships.There's nothing to be admired at Juliette. She's so incredibly damaged and pitiful. She doesn't need a relationship, she need psychiatric care. And so does Adam. He risked his brother's life for a girl he doesn't even know and he claims to love her just because. And Warner, I don't care he has mommy issues or that he's madly “in love” with Juliette, he forced himself on her which is indisputably wrong! Someone get these poor people a shrink!