A review by aldoregan
Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi

4.0

REREAD: january 15, 2019

welp everyone’s gonna kill me for saying this : but this wasn’t as good as the first time i read it 💀 lmao i know, i’m sorry. my reading tastes have changed very much throughout the years. i can say that i’m definitely a lot more critical when it comes to the books that i read now— so of course reading this 5 years ago would be a different experience from reading this today.
things i didn’t enjoy:
the pacing was kinda slow and didn’t really create a great build up for what was to come in the end, the climax scene was kinda anticlimactic, wasn’t as action-packed as i remembered it to be. also (pls dont kill me for this) im beginning to think that tahereh mafi can’t write battle scenes that well, especially since she tries to avoid it by all means.

do i think this book is perfect? absolutely not. do i think it was brilliant? unfortunately, nope. but do i still love it? yes, yes i do.

this book still hits me at the right places and this trilogy altogether makes me feel very nostalgic and emotional. i still care deeply for the characters, and despite the fact that i’ve read far too many books that are 10 times better than this, i still cared about the plot and where the story was going and how the characters were going to deal with it. in conclusion, the shatter me trilogy will always have a very special place in my heart.


Words are like seeds, I think, planted into our hearts at a tender age. They take root in us as we grow, settling deep into our souls. The good words plant well. They flourish and find homes in our hearts. They build trunks around our spines, steadying us when we’re feeling most flimsy; planting our feet firmly when we’re feeling most unsure. But the bad words grow poorly. Our trunks infest and spoil until we are hollow and housing the interests of others and not our own. We are forced to eat the fruit those words have borne, held hostage by the branches growing arms around our necks, suffocating us to death, one word at a time.