Shatter Me ~ Tahereh Mafi review

Shatter Me (Shatter Me #1)
Harper Teen
November 15, 2011
338 pages
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Juliette has been locked up by The Reestablishment for murder. It's been 264 days since she's touched anyone. The last time was an accident - and what got her locked up for murder. No one can explain it, but Juliette's touch is deadly, lethal. If she doesn't touch anyone, no one cares . . . but it leaves Juliette terribly lonely. Not even her own mother could touch Juliette, or seemed to want to.

With the rest of the world coming apart - rampant disease, birds that no longer fly among other things - no one cares enough to pay attention to Juliette.

Except for The Reestablishment. They are the one's who said they knew how to fix things, the one's who put 17-year-old Juliette in a cell. The ones who want to use her for nefarious purposes.

Will Juliette be their weapon? Or will she fight back?


Upon first hearing about Shatter Me, I really wanted to read it because the Juliette reminded me of the girl on an episode of Angel who couldn't touch anyone (she electrocuted people?). Shatter Me takes things much, much further, though.

The Reestablishment is a bit like the Captitol in the Hunger Games; the Reestablishment started out with the people liking them, but now there are murmurs of war. That's where things are when they have Juliette locked up and decide they'll use her power for their own purposes.

Juliette, who has been plagued with this, literally, deadly touch her whole life.

Things really just escalate from there.

The way that little hints of the dystopian society were given at different points of the novel without a full, narrative explanation of the current state of things was different but also really, really nice. It kept a bit of mystery about what to expect later in the novel with what the characters would encounter. It also, interestingly, didn't leave the reader wanting for more because of how things were revealed, each bit felt like something extra, not like anything else was missing.

Those relationships between the characters other than the two romantic leads were stronger than the main romantic relationship. The characters seemed to connect more easily and honestly and it was a ton of fun to read their interactions. Between Juliette and her male counterpart there was still a very good relationship, it was just not as great as the other relationships.

I'm not sure how I feel about the strikethroughs used in Shatter Me. They're not distracting - and do seem less frequent later in the novel - but I'm not really sure I like them, either. I will say I don't really love the '1,' '2,' etc instead of 'one,' 'two' but that's me (and grammar rules).

The ending of this was one that definitely leaves you ready for Book Two . . .

8/10