Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Title: Shatter Me
Author: Tahereh Mafi
Published: November 15, 2011 by HarperCollins
Pages: 338/Hardcover
Series: Shatter Me #1
Challenge: 2011 Debut Author Challenge
Source: bought


Summary:
 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. 

Review: I had heard a lot about Shatter Me from other bloggers and most had loved it. I didn’t love it, but it was still a great book!

The style of writing in Shatter Me was hard to get used to at first, but once I did it made understanding Juliette a lot easier. The book’s written in a stream-of-consciousness style. It kind of flows along with whatever the character is thinking right then. So punctuation and staying on point can kind of go astray at times.

At the same time, this writing style really allowed me to see exactly what Juliette was thinking. This made it a lot easier to connect with her and feel her emotions about what was going on.

I feel like this book was much more characters based than action based, mainly because I didn’t see that much in the plot. She gets out of the prison she’s in and then ends up trying to escape the people who are keeping her. Besides these developments not a lot comes up. It’s mainly the characters we learn about: their pasts and secrets and powers.

I didn’t see much development in the plot, but the characters made up for it. With a unique writing style and even more unique characters, Shatter Me was a great book that also served as a good book to ponder.