Shatter Me

Shatter Me

by Tahereh Mafi

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Dystopian Fiction

Synopsis:  "You can't touch me," I whisper.

I'm lying, is what I don't tell him.

He can touch me, is what I'll never tell him.

Please touch me, is what I want to tell him.

But things happen when people touch me.

Strange things.

Bad things.

Dead things.

No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her.  Plans to use her as a weapon.

But Juliette has plans of her own.

After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time-and to find a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever.

Review: Sigh, I've started on another trilogy.  I didn't know that going into the book.  But after finishing the book and the end not being an end but a beginning to another chapter in Juliette's life, I figured there must be more.  And there are, 2 more-Unravel Me and Ignite Me which is due out in February of 2014.  This book grew on me.  At the beginning when Juliette is in an insane asylum because her touch is fatal, she crosses sentences out left and right and that became really annoying because I didn't always see the value in it.  In fact, I rarely saw the value in it.  Luckily that stopped being so frequent later on in the book.  It also bothered me that the author used constant metaphors, similes, figurative language one after the other after the other.  It was just TOO much.  I just learned a word for it!  She wrote in the style of purple prose-prose that is far too flowery, ornate and melodramatic for it's own good.  Luckily that did get better half way through when the story started to pick up.  This book does take place in a dystopian society but there is a romance that is in the forefront throughout the story.  While I know I'm criticizing the book a lot, something about it grabbed me and kept me reading.  Something makes me want to read the next books-maybe it's that Juliette was given hope regarding her "gift" and I want to know how she uses it in the future.  The second half of the book really saved my rating.

Rating: 3 stars