Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Goodreads Synopsis: 

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.

Print Length: 338 pages
Publisher: Harper (November 15th 2011)
Genre: YA paranormal/dystopian

My rating for Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1):

This was probably the best dystopian novel I've ever read.

I love how this story was written with words crossed out, numbers written in numerical form, and repeated words/phrases because they truly put me into Juliette's mind. They were the effects of how she's been treated and represented her sanity, her sanity, her sanity. Besides these writing traits, the rest of the writing made me feel like I knew exactly how Juliette thought and felt: crazy, defiant, longing, heartache, and most of all, love. Juliette is a strong M.C. that I really loved to death.

I really got a sense of what it was like to live in confinement from how Juliette's thoughts came through in Tahereh Mafi's writing. As the book continued, I really felt for her and how crappy her life had been. Never being able to touch people for fear of killing hurting them, for people being disgusted by afraid of her because she was a monster dangerous. I felt her heart ache as she wished someone would actually treat her like a human.

“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” 

Which leads me to Adam. Adam was a boy Juliette used to know before she was taken away for years of testing and locked away from the public. Adam was the only boy person who didn't throw rocks at her when they went to the same school. He didn't treat her like a pariah. He sometimes even stood up to the bullies for her, like he did care. Then she meets him again after all these years and as it turned out, he can touch her without being hurt.

I loved Juliette and Adam together. The way they fought for each other and for a future made me want to fight with them. In fact, this entire book made me want to get up and do something to prevent this from ever happening to my own country. Books like this reinforce that fire in me that moves me to fight for everything a society should fight for. 

Shatter Me accomplishes what, in my opinion, all of the other YA dystopian series of the recent years have failed to do: This futuristic United States (as I assume it was) seemed MORE than just a government/society gone wrong, one that would never happen; The Reestablishment felt like a result that was highly capable of happening if our future continues to plunder. The Reestablishment is a militaristic government and Juliette lives on the base for a good portion of the novel, so we get to see what this government is actually like and capable of doing. In the future books, I hope to learn more about this aspect of this futuristic world to gain an even deeper sense of it.

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Find Shatter Me on Goodreads, Amazon, and B&N.

Show Tahereh Mafi some love on her website, Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads! Also, CLICK HERE is a short interview with Tahereh. It just makes you want to read it, doesn't it?