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A review by pocketsable
Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
Shatter Me is the story of Juliette. A girl who's been locked up for years because of the terrifying ability to kill people with her touch. However, her life changes in an instant when she's taken out of her locked room by a man who is looking to use her ability to as a weapon to fuel his power.
I'm not even sure where to begin, really. This book has a very interesting, albeit not exactly unique, premise. It has a vaguely interesting, although again not unique, dystopian world setup. However, it fails so spectacularly on everything else that it honestly doesn't matter. It doesn't help that the book doesn't seem to think those two things matter, either.
The writing is something you'll either love or hate. I personally hated it with every fiber of my being. There were sentences that waxed poetic about irrelevant things, like the fact someone was wearing clothing. There were multiple paragraphs filled with metaphors dedicated to Juliette's feelings which were then completely discarded by the next paragraph. There were sentences meant to be filled with passion and young love, only they sounded more like they came out of an early copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. I cringed and laughed my way through the ridiculousness of it. I could have forgave it if the book was meant to be full of beautiful imagery or psychological insight into a teenage girl who suffered terrible trauma. Sadly, none of these applied. The world was a generic dystopian stereotype, a psychosis of the main character which is implied but never really mentioned and the character didn't have any backstory or clue to why she would be speaking this way. It came off as pretentious and overtly obnoxious most of the time.
This book also suffers from a severe case of YA drama stereotypes. Which are including but not limited to, two main characters falling in "Insta-Love" despite not having any real interaction beforehand, the main character being inexplicably attractive to every male character that she crosses, sexual tension between the 'bad guy' and the main character despite multiple assault and one dubiously close-to-rape scene, the character having one flaw but is seemingly perfect at everything else, boring generic 'nice guy with no personality' love interest, male friend of love interest being flirty constantly with main character, main character seems to have lost her ability to actually think because the plot says so and, my personal favorite, lose all ambition to live (or in this case, survive) without the man you barely know.
The characters themselves fare no better. The main character, Juliette, is pretty self-insert written in the vein of Bella from Twilight. She has no real personality and she doesn't effect the plot so much as do things to move it forward. Her inner dialogue rarely goes outside of "I'm full of angst" and "I want to do the horizontal tango with this guy". She has nothing that makes her unique, sans the whole 'kill people with her touch' bit, yet men fall at her feet like she's the second coming. Speaking of, our male lead, the best way of describing him is 'generic'. He's a strong. He's nice. He's hot. And he will do anything to protect Juliette. Oh and he conveniently isn't effected by her 'kill people with touch' power. He really doesn't have that much personality outside of 'love interest'. Our main bad guy has a bit of personality and backstory but I fear it's just to make the reader feel less bad about the whole 'Juliette might also have the hots for him' bit. You can't make him TOO evil, otherwise you might take away all that sweet sexual tension that the writer seems to think the readers want.
There were a few more characters but they didn't appear until the end and only served as a way to further the plot, so I feel no need to mention them here.
Overall, I disliked this book for many reasons. The biggest being this COULD have been a decent book. If you removed the invasive and pointless romance and used that time to supply more character moments or backstory. If the writing didn't come off as pretentious and hard to read. If the events happened naturally and not because 'the plot says so'. The potential was there but it's so far out of reach that I can't even imagine this book series getting even remotely better in my eyes. Which, of course, is not helped by the conclusion of the book. Juliette putting on clothes followed by a couldn't-get-any-more-generic line, "I'm Ready."
Yes, Juliette. I'm ready as well.
Ready to stop reading your story.
I'm not even sure where to begin, really. This book has a very interesting, albeit not exactly unique, premise. It has a vaguely interesting, although again not unique, dystopian world setup. However, it fails so spectacularly on everything else that it honestly doesn't matter. It doesn't help that the book doesn't seem to think those two things matter, either.
The writing is something you'll either love or hate. I personally hated it with every fiber of my being. There were sentences that waxed poetic about irrelevant things, like the fact someone was wearing clothing. There were multiple paragraphs filled with metaphors dedicated to Juliette's feelings which were then completely discarded by the next paragraph. There were sentences meant to be filled with passion and young love, only they sounded more like they came out of an early copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. I cringed and laughed my way through the ridiculousness of it. I could have forgave it if the book was meant to be full of beautiful imagery or psychological insight into a teenage girl who suffered terrible trauma. Sadly, none of these applied. The world was a generic dystopian stereotype, a psychosis of the main character which is implied but never really mentioned and the character didn't have any backstory or clue to why she would be speaking this way. It came off as pretentious and overtly obnoxious most of the time.
This book also suffers from a severe case of YA drama stereotypes. Which are including but not limited to, two main characters falling in "Insta-Love" despite not having any real interaction beforehand, the main character being inexplicably attractive to every male character that she crosses, sexual tension between the 'bad guy' and the main character despite multiple assault and one dubiously close-to-rape scene, the character having one flaw but is seemingly perfect at everything else, boring generic 'nice guy with no personality' love interest, male friend of love interest being flirty constantly with main character, main character seems to have lost her ability to actually think because the plot says so and, my personal favorite, lose all ambition to live (or in this case, survive) without the man you barely know.
The characters themselves fare no better. The main character, Juliette, is pretty self-insert written in the vein of Bella from Twilight. She has no real personality and she doesn't effect the plot so much as do things to move it forward. Her inner dialogue rarely goes outside of "I'm full of angst" and "I want to do the horizontal tango with this guy". She has nothing that makes her unique, sans the whole 'kill people with her touch' bit, yet men fall at her feet like she's the second coming. Speaking of, our male lead, the best way of describing him is 'generic'. He's a strong. He's nice. He's hot. And he will do anything to protect Juliette. Oh and he conveniently isn't effected by her 'kill people with touch' power. He really doesn't have that much personality outside of 'love interest'. Our main bad guy has a bit of personality and backstory but I fear it's just to make the reader feel less bad about the whole 'Juliette might also have the hots for him' bit. You can't make him TOO evil, otherwise you might take away all that sweet sexual tension that the writer seems to think the readers want.
There were a few more characters but they didn't appear until the end and only served as a way to further the plot, so I feel no need to mention them here.
Overall, I disliked this book for many reasons. The biggest being this COULD have been a decent book. If you removed the invasive and pointless romance and used that time to supply more character moments or backstory. If the writing didn't come off as pretentious and hard to read. If the events happened naturally and not because 'the plot says so'. The potential was there but it's so far out of reach that I can't even imagine this book series getting even remotely better in my eyes. Which, of course, is not helped by the conclusion of the book. Juliette putting on clothes followed by a couldn't-get-any-more-generic line, "I'm Ready."
Yes, Juliette. I'm ready as well.
Ready to stop reading your story.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual assault