A review by amelia_m3llark
Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi

1.5

I gave this 1.5 stars, only fractionally better than the first book in the series. I’m just so conflicted about Unravel Me, and not in a good way. Sometimes the characters will genuinely have good scenes and dialogue. The use of prose will actually make sense for once. And suddenly, everything’s clicking together for me. I start to understand why, maybe, this series is so beloved on BookTok. But then someone will say something so stupid, or so unlike their character that I’m ripped from the scene and hate this series all over again.
Also, at this point it seems like the only time something interesting will happen is when Warner is causing trouble of some kind. The first couple hundred pages were a struggle to get through without him. It actually put me in a reading slump tor a little while, because it was just so boring.
I’m still struggling to see why people like Warner.

I get that he’s oh-so tortured because of his shitty father and mommy issues. But he literally told Juliette he doesn’t care about anyone but her??? And he doesn’t regret ANYTHING he’s done??? Are we just going to let go of the whole baby-torture scene? Because that still doesn’t sit right with me, and besides physical attraction, I’m not really seeing the chemistry between Warner and Juliette.

My last grievance about this book: It’s so unnecessarily LONG for so little plot. I don’t want to hear about how Juliette really wants to touch Adam, because direct skin-to-skin contact gives her some weird sense of pleasure. Feels vaguely sexual for no reason, and makes me uncomfortable all around. Also,

I really don’t care about how Adam and Juliette still yearn for each other or whatever after they’ve broken up. The amount of times Juliette chases Adam down a hallway because he’s all grumpy about something again, and him then saying some angsty bullshit about “why the hell can’t we be together?” and Juliette thinking to herself, Why do I always end up talking with him alone, omg, it was a mistake to go after him!, is boringly repetitive.