Reviews with content warning for Violence - Imagine Me

Originally, I wanted to rate this 4 stars, but now I want to give it a 3-3.5 rating due to lack of action building. A few major scenes felt anti-climatic to me when I expected to read a whole battle scene. The first scene I expected more from was

Warner fighting Juliette and trying to get her back. It felt uncanny to read that Warner was fighting with Juliette, led her away to corner her, and then had a make-out session which was how he brought her back. The way he brought her back didn't seem fitting to me when I wanted to read a battle between them and Warner expressing his feelings for her to inspire a change in her mental state and bring various memories in and out of her mind that would lead to Juliette taking back her mind again.

This change in the scene would've highlighted how difficult it would be for Juliette to get her mind back, considering that her mind was wavering for only brief moments throughout the entire book.

Another moment that felt very anticlimactic was how easily

the Supreme Commanders were falling one by one. I understand that Juliette is meant to be an overpowered character, but there were moments where she was successfully subdued/contained for a few moments rendering her powerless. That said, there could have been a more prolonged battle between her and Max. Max's character is not as strong as Evie's, but he was still willing to fight/contain Juliette to continue with Operation Synthesis. The battle could have lasted longer if the weapons imbued with Adam's power had been utilized more or on a larger scale. The book emphasized the urgency to prevent Adam's ability from being weaponized since all of their powers would be rendered useless. But Max and the rest of the scientists had successfully weaponized Adam's power (and Anderson injected a vile of it in his own body) that it felt disappointing that we didn't get to read how those weapons would have been strategically used against Juliette. Subduing Juliette's powers for even a limited of time would have allowed the readers to understand a new side to her and watch her excel in hand-to-hand combat.

While I do think the weapon wasn't used as much throughout the book due to their plan becoming more faulty from the time constraints and stress; it still felt upsetting not to read a proper fight scene that would have enhanced Juliette's character and brains.

Overall, I still enjoyed the book but wished for more developed action scenes.

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sadiebugreads's review against another edition

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tense fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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abicaro17's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

If you asked me if I liked this book 300 pages in I would have said no. Honestly this book sucked. Boring and gross and depressing. But Mafi manages to once again make a full recovery in the end. I even cried. I hate to say it but the end was so sweet the whole gross Anderson thing seems less offensive.

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anna_333's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Was scared to read this, turned into one of my favorite shatter me books!!

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madamenovelist's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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melist6's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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proudtobeabookaholic's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Juliette Ferrars or Ella Sommers - who is she, really? She was born as Ella, but transformed to Juliette, a soldier who obeys order. When the final battle approaches she may not even get to choose which side she wants to fight for.

I think I agree with those who believe this should have stayed a trilogy. I do enjoy hanging with the characters, and since I had long gaps between books 3 and 4, as well as between books 4 and 5, I didn't mind the continuation. But now it wasn't that long ago since I read the fifth book, and I feel like there's quite a lot of repetitions. They win a fight, lose the next, win again... and so on. Not much variation and this book doesn't come with any real surprises either.

I've borrowed the whole series from the library, but I didn't have time to read Imagine Me before I had to bring it back. Instead of waiting until it was available again I decided to listen to it. It wasn't a good choice. We get Juliette's/Ella's, Kenji's and, at the end, Warner's/Aaron's POV's, and the narrator that reads Kenji's chapters has a tendency to be overdramatic. Another thing is that my experience of the language gets different when I listen. Mafi's got a special way with words (at least in this series), and what gets striking in text can get tiresome when hearing it. Imagine the impression you get when you see a whole page written with "I am not insane", just repeating itself. Now imagine the same words narrated by a voice, over and over again, for about a minute. Not really the same thing, is it?

Well, I feel satisfied with having read the whole series now. I would like to read something else by Mafi to see if she always writes like this, or if it's only for these books.

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esterslibrary's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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