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farairytale 's review for:
Imagine Me
by Tahereh Mafi
NONSPOILER REVIEW FIRST:
First let me start of with a disclaimer: I ADORED the entire Shatter Me series, I really did. Unfortunately, Imagine Me just didn’t do it for me, namely because it felt like there should have been a whole other book (not the 6.5 novella but a full on BOOK) to explain everything and wrap everything up perfectly. The plot in this book felt weak and sporadic, and the ending of this book felt RUSHED - as I was reading it and getting closer and closer to the end, I was counting the pages left and googling if this truly was the LAST official book in the series because there was no way a perfectly addressed and detailed ending was possible with the time left.
___________SPOILERS BELOW_____________
I repeatedly asked myself how the entirety of this series was going to be wrapped up in the FORTY pages left, including, at the very least, a moving scene giving us closure through burying/laying to rest Juliette’s sister’s body and, at the MOST, contesting with and crushing the remnants of the Reestablishment, restoring the Sanctuary, and rebuilding the world. The wedding epilogue scene was similarly completely crazy after the last page had been “Juliette mercifully killed her sister, brought down the Oceania Reestablishment facility in hellfire, and then finally walked out with Warner carrying her sister’s dead body”???? CRAZY, I TELL YOU. It just felt like it was unfinished, so much left unwritten. I was truly surprised as Tahereh had dragged out a lot of the rest of the series that she could have compacted yet this - the ENDING of the FINALE of the ENTIRE SERIES - was the area she decided to gloss over and essentially use a fade-to-black methodology? Unsatisfying in every way. I was actually left anxious as I still felt as though Juliette was in trouble despite the 1 second-described ‘emerged victorious’ ending.
We never got to see the beautiful yet haunting parallel of the kids of the supreme commanders coming together to face down their parents, ensuring the betterment of the world through their OWN flesh-and-blood family members’ deaths. Not really, anyways. We didn’t see the kids work together except for a brief mention of ONE SENTENCE after Nazeera freed them. We got a longer look at the freaking Resistance members using their powers/fighting against Sector 45 a few books back than the supreme commanders’ kids TOPPLING A WORLDWIDE REGIME. This is one of those instances where I feel Tahereh, a superb writer, could have written such fantastically moving scenes that really served to tie up the whole series, particularly with the continued dynamics between the supreme commanders and their children, demonstrating to the world that the old regime had fallen and a new hope had risen. So much was left unsaid; such beautifully poignant opportunities were wasted.
Another thing that really bothered me was the RE-kidnapping of Juliette. Not only had they all NOT learned their lesson the first time around, but the second time made the first kidnapping look so pathetic?? They so easily retrieved Juliette the first round of the kidnapping and her mind wasn’t at all impacted that it was SOOO UNBELIEVABLE.
Also, Paris’s final death was soooo unbelievable and anticlimactic after he’d made it out of near impossible-to-survive murder attempts. Also, why the heck do we get such a deep, humanistic look at Paris (his abuse as a child at the hands of his mother, him wanting to be a baker, etc) for him to die like that without a dramatic showdown with Warner or Juliette reclaiming her mind and asserting final dominance over him?
I truly feel as though Tahereh was going to do something entirely different - perhaps a whole other book or, at the very least, a much more detailed, complex, and gratifying ending - and then suddenly just…didn’t? Idk wtf happened but she and her editors really let the ball drop. Speaking of editors, there were a bunch of grammatical errors and word issues (unintentional repetitions, incorrect use of words, etc) with this book which was disappointing as well.
All in all: disappointing, unsatisfactory, and a hole was left inside me that I hope the 6.5 novella will fill. However, even if the novella helps, in my opinion the last true BOOK of the series should have been the one to wrap almost everything up. I’m quite saddened by (what has become) my all-time FAVORITE book series ending not with a bang but with a whimper.
First let me start of with a disclaimer: I ADORED the entire Shatter Me series, I really did. Unfortunately, Imagine Me just didn’t do it for me, namely because it felt like there should have been a whole other book (not the 6.5 novella but a full on BOOK) to explain everything and wrap everything up perfectly. The plot in this book felt weak and sporadic, and the ending of this book felt RUSHED - as I was reading it and getting closer and closer to the end, I was counting the pages left and googling if this truly was the LAST official book in the series because there was no way a perfectly addressed and detailed ending was possible with the time left.
___________SPOILERS BELOW_____________
I repeatedly asked myself how the entirety of this series was going to be wrapped up in the FORTY pages left, including, at the very least, a moving scene giving us closure through burying/laying to rest Juliette’s sister’s body and, at the MOST, contesting with and crushing the remnants of the Reestablishment, restoring the Sanctuary, and rebuilding the world. The wedding epilogue scene was similarly completely crazy after the last page had been “Juliette mercifully killed her sister, brought down the Oceania Reestablishment facility in hellfire, and then finally walked out with Warner carrying her sister’s dead body”???? CRAZY, I TELL YOU. It just felt like it was unfinished, so much left unwritten. I was truly surprised as Tahereh had dragged out a lot of the rest of the series that she could have compacted yet this - the ENDING of the FINALE of the ENTIRE SERIES - was the area she decided to gloss over and essentially use a fade-to-black methodology? Unsatisfying in every way. I was actually left anxious as I still felt as though Juliette was in trouble despite the 1 second-described ‘emerged victorious’ ending.
We never got to see the beautiful yet haunting parallel of the kids of the supreme commanders coming together to face down their parents, ensuring the betterment of the world through their OWN flesh-and-blood family members’ deaths. Not really, anyways. We didn’t see the kids work together except for a brief mention of ONE SENTENCE after Nazeera freed them. We got a longer look at the freaking Resistance members using their powers/fighting against Sector 45 a few books back than the supreme commanders’ kids TOPPLING A WORLDWIDE REGIME. This is one of those instances where I feel Tahereh, a superb writer, could have written such fantastically moving scenes that really served to tie up the whole series, particularly with the continued dynamics between the supreme commanders and their children, demonstrating to the world that the old regime had fallen and a new hope had risen. So much was left unsaid; such beautifully poignant opportunities were wasted.
Another thing that really bothered me was the RE-kidnapping of Juliette. Not only had they all NOT learned their lesson the first time around, but the second time made the first kidnapping look so pathetic?? They so easily retrieved Juliette the first round of the kidnapping and her mind wasn’t at all impacted that it was SOOO UNBELIEVABLE.
Also, Paris’s final death was soooo unbelievable and anticlimactic after he’d made it out of near impossible-to-survive murder attempts. Also, why the heck do we get such a deep, humanistic look at Paris (his abuse as a child at the hands of his mother, him wanting to be a baker, etc) for him to die like that without a dramatic showdown with Warner or Juliette reclaiming her mind and asserting final dominance over him?
I truly feel as though Tahereh was going to do something entirely different - perhaps a whole other book or, at the very least, a much more detailed, complex, and gratifying ending - and then suddenly just…didn’t? Idk wtf happened but she and her editors really let the ball drop. Speaking of editors, there were a bunch of grammatical errors and word issues (unintentional repetitions, incorrect use of words, etc) with this book which was disappointing as well.
All in all: disappointing, unsatisfactory, and a hole was left inside me that I hope the 6.5 novella will fill. However, even if the novella helps, in my opinion the last true BOOK of the series should have been the one to wrap almost everything up. I’m quite saddened by (what has become) my all-time FAVORITE book series ending not with a bang but with a whimper.