A review by maayaner29
Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

The writing style is so annoying, every time she thinks something to herself there are words that are crossed out. It’s fine when what is crossed out is, for example, the opposite of what she says (although that also gets annoying sometimes because of how often she does it), but when it’s things like my heart, my heart, my heart or the pocket of the purple dress. The pocket of the purple dress, it’s so pointless and doesn’t add anything to the plot, at the beginning there is almost an entire page of just I am not insane. I am not insane… no one that is actually sane thinks like that, so maybe she should think again. Another thing that really bothers me in the writing style is when she “counts” things in her head, the beginning of chapter six goes like: “1 word, 2 lips, 3 4 5 fingers form 1 fist. 1 corner, 2 parents, 3 4 5 reasons to hide. 1 child, 2 eyes, 3 4 17 years of fear.” Or she’ll say something like: “There are 15,000 feelings of disbelief hole-punched in my heart.” Or “his face is 10,000 possibilities staring straight through me.” Girl, we get it, you’re edgy and different, but just shut up. 
You could say that the writing is supposed to be poetic or something but it’s not! It just doesn’t make any sense, sometimes it’s hard to read because of everything that’s crossed out, and it doesn’t sound pretty or anything. Especially what I just wrote before, the part with the “1 word, 2 lips…” that was so weird, it felt like the author just thought or random things and decided that it was a poem or something.
Also I don’t like that the numbers aren’t written in word form, it doesn’t seem like a professional thing to do when you’re an author. Overall from the fact that a ton of things are crossed out all the time, she’s always repeating stuff again and again, they don’t add anything to the plot, she counts everything for some reason and the numbers aren’t written in word form, it makes it feel like it was written by a young preteen on wattpad 🥴. The insane amount of repetition feels like a student is adding words to make their assignment longer. I really hope that this messy writing is going to stop at some point because I can’t imagine reading 10 more books like this.
Another thing that I thought was annoying about the writing style was all the weird reactions she had to things, for example, if Adam looked at her, her reaction would be something like: “I’m dying, I can’t breathe, I’m falling off a building” or something like that, the overreaction is through the roof. In the beginning
of chapter thirty three Adam says: “it just keeps hitting me. You’re really here. In my house.” To which her reaction is: “heat rushes up my neck and I fall off a ladder holding a paintbrush dipped in red.” What the hell does that mean?? 🤨 Omg a few pages later a line goes: “James and Adam glance back at me and I melt into pink Play-Doh.”
This is too funny lmao where did the author get these lines lol.
The love triangle made no sense, everything moved way too quickly, she’s only been there for a few weeks and already Adam is telling her he loves her, I know that they’ve known each other since they were kids, but they never even spoke to one another during all those years and they haven’t seen each other in 3 years and they’ve both obviously changed since then, and suddenly they’re in love. Make it make sense. Since the beginning Warner holds her captive, doesn’t let her have any freedom, and basically uses her and tries to make her a weapon. And then suddenly, out of nowhere he’s like “I could love you, Juliette—I would treat you like a queen—“ and “you could love me you know…I could make you happy.” Dude where did you come from? Also, a little bit after that he says: “The world put you here. You’re here because of them! You think if you leave they’re going to accept you? You think you can run away and live a normal life? No one will care for you. No one will come near you—you’ll be an outcast like you’ve always been! Nothing has changed! You belong with me!” Gaslighting much?
Kenji is so cringe and such an unrealistic character.
The guy comes to their home and because of him they now have to flee because if they stay they could literally be killed and James who is a CHILD could also be killed, and the guy not only doesn’t feel an ounce of remorse, he actually jokes about it and acts aloof, and tells them to stop worrying cause everything’s fine, nothing is fine! Because of him three people including a child have to flee in order to survive, they have nowhere to go, very little money, and thousands of soldiers are after them and he just does not care. If you were the only one in danger then it’s fine, you do you, but when your careless actions now may cost other lives as well, you don’t make jokes about it. I know that I’ve only read the first book and I don’t know how Kenji is going to turn out, but when I see how much people on the internet love him and I see how he acts now, I’m kind of worried. I also forgot, he basically sexually harasses Juliette, he makes comments that make her really uncomfortable, like telling her she’s sexy even though she’s uncomfortable, saying that a girl is sexy is fine but she’s uncomfortable, and he doesn’t stop, he keeps saying things like this and making sexual innuendos, that’s sexual harassment. There’s a dialogue between Kenji and Juliette that goes: “You don’t want me to touch you.” “Maybe I do.” He’s definitely grinning.” And he also keeps trying to make her “interested” in him.
Based on what people on the internet think about the book you can really see that the readers are very young, and that’s not a bad thing, what is a bad thing is the fact that the author writes a character that sexually harasses a girl but because it’s subtle and only verbal, you have young girls reading it and thinking that the guy is so funny, so cute and whatever. 
And then Warner also sexually harasses Juliette! In chapter thirty nine he gets her in a classroom and proceeds to try to manipulate her and he says that he loves her and that he knows she loves him too and she’s attracted to him. She never even gave any hint of that. But wait, it gets worse, he then pushes her against the wall and starts touching her body, his hands start touching her back to “feel the form of her figure.” While she’s trying to find a way to way to get away, so clearly she doesn’t want it. But wait, it gets worse, he then KISSES her forcefully. That, sir, is sexual assault. And the crazy thing, is that he genuinely believes that she loves him back and that she enjoys it, not only is he a major red flag, he’s also delusional. Oh, and he does all of that after he killed Adam (she doesn’t know at that point that Adam is still alive), whom Juliette loves, it’s already crazy that he believes she loves him, but it’s even crazier considering he just killed Adam. Who in their right mind would think that a girl would love them after they killed the guy she loves???? Because of booktok I know that she’s going to end up with Warner but how!?! What will, despite everything Warner did, make her decide that he’s good enough for her? If a guy who had kidnapped me and held me captive for weeks and tried to make me a weapon to kill people and then killed or at least was about to kill the guy that I love, I wouldn’t forgive him ever. What he did is, to me at least and I hope to other people as well, unforgivable. I guess I need to read the other books to know how they’re going to end up together 😂 but god, I really don’t feel like reading the rest.
James was the only character I liked.
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