Tuesday, 25 April 2017

Shatter Me - Tahereh Mafi

"I have a curse
I have a gift

I am a monster
I'm more than human

My touch is lethal
My touch is power

I am their weapon
I will fight back

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 colour.

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."



Hi Guys, sorry I haven't posted in a while. My computer updated and I couldn't login in to blogger so there will be a little spurt of book reviews today. 

This book at first sounded very promising but after the first 2 chapters thing started going down hill, rapidly. Prose can be beautiful. I’ve read plenty of books where the writing touches me deeply and the author is writing about something quite mundane. If the author is able to actually tell a story without distracting the reader with the prose, I’m all for it.

Unfortunately that is not the case here. This book was over-done, tiring, distracting and silly.

At some point, I was overwhelmed by the prose and metaphors and eager for the story. Don’t get me started about the crossing out of passages in the book. It was thought-provoking at first but soon became irritating.


I get that Mafi wanted to expose her read­ers to the mind of a girl whose san­ity is frag­ile and ques­tion­able and that she’s try­ing to show this through the prose. I think it kinda works. I just think the work­ings of a trou­bled mind would result in more than bad analo­gies and a bunch of num­bers. Despite the fact that Juliette’s back­story and premise is inter­est­ing, we still end up with the same mun­dane, cookie-cutter hero­ine that can be seen in the vast major­ity of YA writing.

Adam, the main love interest, is a cardboard cut-out. Sorry.

Finally Warner. He is a pathetic excuse for a villain. I must admit that a few times he had potential. He made me angry, made me feel uncomfortable and slightly cringe from his insanity. He was getting there, but then he would say something corny or inconsistent or down right silly and I would lose faith.

This book was very set up for a lot of world building but nothing happened. The destruction of the world isn't explained and that annoyed me. I want to know because it would be very interesting!! The end of the book had far to many X-men vibes for me and don't let the label fool you. This is most certainly a dystopian romance. Underline the ROMANCE part.

This is one of those books, like Marmite, you either love it or hate it. I didn't enjoy. (Just like Marmite.)
I would suggest ages 13+. There was some mild making out and some rather creepy obsessiveness.
 

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