Review: Shatter Me

Shatter Me

by Tahereh Mafi

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Release Date: November 15, 2011
Publisher: HarperTeen
Age Group: Young Adult
Source: ebook purchase
Rating: Perfect Bed Partner
About the Book:

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.

After incessant whining and pleading, my mom finally gave in to the inevitable and gave me money to buy the Shatter Me ebook. I don't know how to put this to you, my lovely readers, in elegant terms but I've been holding in the yearning for this book since I first heard about it and have since then had to swallow my envy as more and more bloggers praised its glory. Now, finally, it's my turn, and I have to say, Shatter Me was as purely amazing as I anticipated it to be. My expectations were more than just met. Mafi's beautiful words were FedExed to my soul and my soul did a little tap-dance of extreme joy once I ripped open the package and unearthed the gift inside.

Shatter Me is the perfect blend of dystopian and paranormal, with superhero undertones. We're immediately deposited into Juliet's dark and dismal environment, surrounded by the four dank, bleak walls that make up her prison. Juliette has been forced into a dreadful isolation that has lasted almost an entire year. I don't know about you, but it would be impossible to grab a firm hold on my sanity. As I explored her character with Adam, the devastatingly gorgeous cellmate thrust into her prison alongside her, I wanted to jump up and bear hug this girl. Envelop her and murmur soothing words, rocking her like I would a child who's endured one too many cuts and bruises. Only the pain stitched into Juliette's heart is anything but skin-deep and that's why I fell for her.

Juliette is brilliantly presented to us through dreamlike, imaginative prose, and each whisper of her past makes us hunger to know the truth about her situation. The pain in the atmosphere is mesmerizing, luring us deeper into the story. Her strength is as perplexing as it is amazing and staggering. Her wariness of people is shattering, yet the kindness that shone from her has to be the most overwhelmingly magnificent part of her. Her willingness to forgive everyone who has ever clawed at her feelings and never cared, to reach out and act on her desire to help others, her compassion, is deeply moving. Adam, her cellmate and more, couldn't have been a more fitting romantic lead. A boy who's beauty reaches beyond the skin and who sees Juliette for everything she is and loves her intensely for it. A boy who shares a past with her no one would ever guess at first glance. I simply adored Adam, and couldn't get enough of the sweet heat of their blooming romantic relationship.

Mafi didn't blow my mind with just her rich characters but instead takes it a level further. She portrays the horrors of Juliette's deteriorating world with a vividness that incites, at minimum, a twinge of fear. Disgust for anyone who would deliberately spit in the face of the poverty, the deaths, circulating by living in extravagance coats the tongue and sears your insides until an unprecedented anger rises up. Juliette spits back at the wicked leader of her sector, Warner, who has no regard for the welfare of others and is terribly drunk on power, greedy for more. I couldn't even love Warner's character for being so evil, I just wanted Karma to bitch slap him and knock him on his butt.

There's so much power in the world-building, as Juliette's world slams into our feelings and causes them to tumble and overlap from dizzying pain to gaping horror. Brimming with promising characters and engrossing storytelling, people haven't been fibbing when they've said that Shatter Me is a striking debut, one that Mafi has giftwrapped and left to us to discover the breathstealing surprise inside.

Dirty money is dripping from the walls, a year's supply of food wasted on marble floors, hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical aid poured into fancy furniture and Persian rugs. I feel the artificial heat pouring in through air vents and think of children screaming for clean water. I squint through crystal chandeliers and hear mothers begging for mercy. I see a superficial world existing in the midst of a terrorizing reality and I can't move. I can't breathe. (19%)

"There's nothing wrong with me? You're kidding right?"
Adam stares at me so long I begin to blush. He tips my chin up so I meet his eyes. Blue blue blue boring into me. His voice is deep, steady. "I don't think I've ever heard you laugh before."
My smile is tucked into a straight line. "Laughter comes from living." I shrug, trying to sound indifferent. "I've never really been alive before." (58%)