Lydia Leigh's Library

Title: Shatter Me
Author: Tahereh Mafi
Publisher: US Imports
Published: November 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0062085504
Genre: Dystopian/Sci-fi

I have a curse 

I have a gift

I am a monster 

I'm more than human 

My touch is lethal 

My touch is power 

I am their weapon 

I will fight back 

Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days. 

The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.  

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war – and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she’s exactly what they need right now. 

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆


DNF at 37%

This was actually painful to read. Kat Kennedy wrote a review in which she said: "Shat­ter Me, oth­er­wise known as: When Cre­ative Writ­ing Class Goes Wrong." She hit the nail on the head. 

It's either that or like trying to read really, really bad fanfiction for pretty much any dystopian book ever.

Mafi actually has the makings of a pretty interesting story here and then completely bombs in the execution. The writing is ... well ... I'm pretty sure I covered that with my opening statement. Her characters are flat - they have absolutely no dimension to them. Juliette is every teen, dystopian heroine ever but worse. There is nothing likeable about her - there's nothing to relate to. Adam actually lacks a personality completely. He doesn't have one. At all. I'm not even joking. He is literally the token bad-boy love interest and that is as far as his character development seems to go. Warner is your typical too-good-looking-for-your-own-good Villain who is obviously going to end up number 3 in their epic love triangle. I'm upset that this book is so popular when this has been done so much better in much less popular books: Shadow and Bone, The Darkest Minds.

What's worse is that there is no discernible plot to this book. I might have carried on if I thought that the book was actually going in even a vague direction. It wasn't. It was just scene after scene of Juliette sniveling, Adam brooding and Warner being his evil-genius self.

So much potential with the plot and it's characters but it ends up as an Epic Fail. I'd like to introduce you to the paragraph which finally forced me to give up on this book:

As I said before: I murdered every minute I wasted reading this tragedy and I mind very much.