Shatter Me -- Taherah Mafi

Rating:✰✰✰✰

Let me start out by saying that I started reading this book expecting to hate it--I'd seen it before on my friend's favorite bookshelf and decided to check it out on Goodreads. I read a few reviews, and from what I saw, this book was awful. 

Like, honest-to-goodness awful. So bad it surpassed Fallen on the badness scale (or at least, I think that's how it went. Oh, and by the way, don't click on that link if you want to make sure you still have a decent amount of brain cells left). So I was bracing myself for the worst. 

Why, then, would I ever read this book?

Because on Tuesday my best friend took a while texting me back because she was reading Unravel Me, which she "really wanted to finish." The title sounded familiar to me and I guessed it was the sequel to Shatter Me, and as it turns out, I was right. When she was done, she said, "But now I have to wait for the freaking third book," and so of course I, being the totally great friend that I am, decided to share in her pain to make it less burdening. 

I told her I'd get the first book to read, and I did, that night. I read the first few lines thinking, "Meh," because I was so braced to hate this book to death and ready to start secretly thinking my friend has awful taste in books. 

But I didn't. 

I've been locked up for 264 days. 

 I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company. 1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet I haven't spoken in 264 days of isolation.

6,336 hours since I've touched another human being.  

Deer Lord, I thought, SPELL OUT YOUR FREAKING NUMBERS! I, personally, cannot stand it when, especially in books, people write out numbers in numerical form instead of "one," "two," "three," etc. It was like, geez, this book already got stupid.

I'd promised my friend I'd read it that night though, so I kept on.

 "You're getting a cellmate roommate," they said to me. 

"We hope you rot to death in this place For good behavior," they said to me.

 "Another psycho just like you No more isolation," they said to me. 

Uh, what the heck. How are you even supposed to read that?

This went on for maybe the first two, three pages on my Kindle, and then when Adam came into the scene/cell where Juliette is kept, I thought about how this was sort of ridiculous and hardly plausible and just why would that happen?

But, whatever. Like, that's my attitude to bits of the book now. Whatever. (Hench the lack of a five-star rating.)

I got used to the numbers after a while, and I actually got to start liking them. I like how they show how dependent Juliette is on numbers to provide her stability, how it shows her mindset and her need for some constant in her life, something solid. How she keeps track of them with an almost OCD-type of mindset to concentrate. Plus, since "1" and "2" are so much less common in books than "one" and "two," it makes you think of not just another word but a numerical value that has significance.

Juliette, to me, was a likable character. She had some stupid moments in the second book (but that's for another time) and possibly in the first that made me like her less, but as of right now I can't remember them. As the story progressed though she was often apologetic of her behavior, and she could recognize it as selfish or stupid. She's shown to be kind, not just through anecdotes from Adam (like how she helped out a girl in her fifth grade class who stood crying because she'd turned in a field trip slip too late and Juliette gave her her seat without even hesitating) where she's repeatedly throughout the years kind to other people even without receiving any acknowledgment or recognition for it, but through an example in the middle part of the book where she has to save a three-year old toddler from a hazard chamber. Her emotions and feelings just showed she cared about other people, and personally, I love heroines that are selfless and caring and I wish I could see more of them.

Adam was cute, and his big-brother-relationship with James was touching, as well as how deeply he cared for Juliette. Their love was buyable, and I liked how he described it as "because you're the only good thing left in the world."

Warner, who was supposed to be the antagonist, wasn't all that scary, admittedly, even when he killed a soldier without even flinching. Sorry, Warner, but you have a really cool name, so I root for you! (Even if you're a sick, sick person who enjoys torturing people and didn't care if a toddler died to help you do research, but my friend tells me you're amazing in the second book so that's softened my opinion of you. Lucky jerk.) To be honest, I spent most of the book wavering between "You are sick, twisted bastard" and "Poor Warner, he's probably got a sucky life and he might actually love Juliette." (Don't worry if you're wondering about my sanity, it mostly went back to the former.)


The plot was filled with plenty of action and romantic scenes, so I was content with both of those aspects of the book. Somehow the pacing seems slow and yet...fast, at the same time. Does that make sense? Probably not, but a lot happens and it somehow seems slow-going at the same time, so this actually works out pretty good for me. There's not a lot of time spent where Juliette does nothing, and things just seem to keep happening around the 70% mark of the book.

Also:

Kenji Kishimoto.

Freaking.

Kenji.

KENJI. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! WHY CAN'T YOU BE REAL?

He's so upbeat, resilient, happy-go-lucky what have you and the best part is he's Japanese AND he's a buff soldier! (Also, he has this cool thing about him that I won't reveal to you, but it's cool. Trust me.)

He's so funny, sarcastic, witty, and his dialogue isn't too forced or overdone. It's just there. It's just him and who he is. Some guys, (read: Jace Wayland from The Mortal Instruments) the authors like to force on you that they're perfect, always oh-so-extremely-witty, and in an attempt to do this, it gets to be annoying because they always have to have something cool to say at inappropriate times. Their dialogue also gets longwinded because of this and in their attempt to be "cool"...Nah. You're just trying too hard.

Kenji, though? Please. Move over, Jace Waylands of the world, because this is how you get to be cool--by not trying.

He's amazing. I love him.

It's so adorable how he's protective of James, too, even though he just met him, and his voice is so refreshing to hear after all this long description from Juliette that makes you wonder if anyone in the world talks normal (they do, and you see that early on, but after reading a while from Juliette's prose you forget a lot).

I heard a complaint on Goodreads about how there's something racist that's mentioned about Kenji, and I just kept waiting to leap on the author and hate her for it because of it, but it never came until near the almost end of the book. And honestly? It wasn't even racist. Just dumb.

Kenji's last name is "Kishimoto," and according to a guy named Winston, it's "hard as hell" to pronounce, so they call him "Moto," which pisses Kenji off. I mean, seriously? Kishimoto is not hard to pronounce, even when it's written down, but especially when you say it out loud. My own last name is harder for me to pronounce (I'm also Asian, by the way). It's just stupid on Winston's part, and anyone else that does that, but not racist. I mean, come on, I bet no one would care if it was a white guy's last name, but as soon as it's a character of different ethnicity everyone gets their underwear all in a knot.

There are some things about the book that may turn readers off, though, and Juliette's prose is one of them. I like it most of the time, and yes, she does use a heck of a lot of metaphors all the time. Most of them are weird and admittedly, produce bad images (etc., the only one I can think of right now: "My stomach drops to my knees").

They can be overlooked though, and the rest of the prose is pretty easy to read for me. There's the run-on sentences that she has when she's panicked, but I find them expressive and effective, not annoying.

There are also some things that are questionable, like Juliette's reaction to Adam considering she hasn't seen a human in 264 days, how she's so mentally sound after being cooped up in solitary confinement for so long, how she regains her sanity so quickly, and how she can talk pretty normally to him for the first time after almost a year, but again, they can be overlooked.

Overall:

This was a great book for me, and I love it. I'm currently reading the sequel right now, and it's living up to the first book. I would recommend it, and I would even go so far as to also buy a physical copy of it :)