A review by evey_jem
Restore Me by Tahereh Mafi

2.0

2 words, for a 2 star book... absolutely awful. I genuinely love me a nice Young Adult Fiction, but this just wasn't it. Since I rated all the other books of this series so high, I really thought this one was going to be great too (by association of course), but it was really just bad. I don't know what it was about this book, but literally all of it felt like a fever dream. I highly doubt I was the only one to say this, but Ignite Me had such a beautiful ending that was just so fitting for all of the characters, I don't understand the point of undoing all the good things just for the sake of another book. On top of all of that, I think Juliette was acting like a total brat in this book especially. I know she always had her trouble in the past with dealing with boy trouble while there was a total crisis, but this book in particular, really showed the worst parts of it. Even worse, this girl had so many more responsibilities as Supreme Commander, I don't even think registered with her. Juliette was literally taking walks throughout the day while COMPLAINING that all her work was being piled up. That's like complaining about all the work you have to do while scrolling on your phone. Absolutely, and entirely USELESS. This book especially made me realize that Juliette just doesn't deserve Warner. Speaking of Warner... why didn't he become Supreme Commander?? He obviously has SOOOO much more experience than Juliette and he is also so much more mature. This man has literally been trained his entire life to become Supreme Commander. Why in the world would he pass it up, just for a useless girl to mess it all up? And don't even get me started on the whole weird thing with Oceania and Juliette's sister. Like what was even going on there? This book also tried to force down so many new characters down our throats, that I just felt were completely unnecessary. It was hard to feel anything for them, since they were so underdeveloped. One hot take of mine, that might just be my opinion, is that I did not like the story telling from 2 perspectives one bit. The problem was, since I was getting so fed up with Juliette, I found myself skimming her chapters as fast as I possibly could just to get to Warner's part. I hate to complain even more, but the ending was also so weird, it made absolutely no sense for her "parents" to bring her back and welcome her home. The best way I could describe it was it gave me such a bad ick. I seriously don't mean to sound picky or rude or anything along those lines; it just objectively was not a very strong book. In fact, I have loved every book of this series so much, that I entered it with the best intentions. Truly the only reason this book didn't get a 1 from me was the fact that a) I finished it and b) Warner and Kenji CARRIED.