Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Shatter Me
By Tahereh Mafi
My Rating: FIVE THOUSAND Stars
Publication Date: November 15, 2011
Date Read: Originally in December 2011, Rereading/listening to the Audiobook February 2018 in preparation for RESTORE ME
Hardback, 338 Pages

 Summary From Goodreads:

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.

My Review:

Holy Smokes, has it really been 7 years since I had the joy of reading this wonderfully beautiful book for the first time?!

So I've been tag team reading/listening to this book to get ready for book 4 (which I am super ecstatic for. I mean, I can't even find the right words to use to properly describe how excited I am for this) and I have to say, even though I'm not %100 in love with the narrator (for me, she makes Juliette sound super young. Way younger than her 17 years) I actually enjoyed listening to it. I was paying closer attention to it, and I actually learned some things that I had missed before (or forgotten about) Like when the characters were talking or Juliette was having an internal monologue, and there some words that I wouldn't have, you know, put emphasis on while I was reading, which gave it a whole new meaning for me. Does that even make sense to anyone besides me?

I love this book. No matter how many times I read this series, my love never diminishes. In fact, it grows.

It's so beautifully written, Juliette's feelings are so strong. When she's sad, I'm sad. When she's angry, I'm angry... and so on and so forth.

I love how many emotions that this book makes me feel while I'm reading it. Even though I know what's going to happen, when a sad part comes up, I still cry. It's almost ridiculous. Almost. This book. I just. Yeah. I'm going to try and get my reviews up for books 2 and 3 and now number 4 at some point.

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Quotes

Top Ten Tuesday is an awesome weekly event hosted over at The Broke And The Bookish and this week their topic is "Favorite Bookish Quotes". I actually love this, because I am a collector of quotes. I keep a little journal and when I am reading and find a good quote I like to write it down.





1. "I don't lie. Ever. I don't need to, because I don't care if I hurt anyone's feelings. The truth is the truth, forever unchanging, and it's better than a lie any day of the week."
 This first quote comes from Frosty from the book A Mad Zombie Party by Gena Showalter, and let me tell you now I loooooove this quote.

2.You're not from around here, are you? Can't be. Why would we name it I-YOU-POO-Y? Really? Say the letters. I-U-P-U-I.” 
This one's from Wildcat Fireflies by Amber Kizer. I like this one because leave it to an out-of-towner to mess up the name IUPUI {I-You-Poo-Y... *Snorts* that's hilarious}

3. “Saying good-bye is basically an invitation not to see a person again. It's making it okay for that to be the last conversation you have. So if you don't say it--if you leave the conversation open--it means you'll have to see them again." 
Roger Sullivan said this in the book Amy & Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson... I kind of took this quote to heart. Even before this book came out, I never really said Good-Bye to people, it was always see you later. And then after I read it, I started leaving the word Good-Bye out of my vocabulary more and more. Yes, there are some times that I still say good-bye, but it is very rarely.

4. “You see, cuckoos are parasites. They lay their eggs in other birds' nests. When the egg hatches, the baby cuckoo pushes the other baby birds out of the nest. The poor parent birds work themselves to death trying to find enough food to feed the enormous cuckoo child who has murdered their babies and taken their places."

"Enormous?" said Jace. "Did you just call me fat?"
"It was an analogy."
"I am not fat.” 

This one was from City of Ashes... Jace is always so entertaining.


5. Home isn't a place. Home is the people who love you the most.
 This one came from the book All In by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and I just so happen to agree with this one whole-heartedly.

6. Honesty's easy. It's trust that's hard.
I don't really remember which book this quote came from

7.  "It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice, but what you say. It's not how you look in that body, but the things you do with it. You are beautiful."
Ian O'Shea *Swoon*

8. I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with.
This one was from Warner in Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi. He's my fave.

9.Words will live as long as people can remember them.
Another one from Warner... I told you he was my fave. 

10. “Life's messy," he agreed. "But sometimes amazing things can happen, even when it seems like it's all falling apart.”  
This one came from How {Not} To Fall In Love by Lisa Brown Roberts 

So what are your favorite bookish quotes? Let me know in the comments below!
 

 
 
 

Review: Unite Me by Tahereh Mafi

My Rating: 5 Stars
Date Read: July 2015

Publication Date: February 14, 2014
Paperback, 197 pages



Summary from Goodreads:

Perfect for fans of Tahereh Mafi’s New York Times bestselling Shatter Metrilogy, this book collects her two companion novellas, Fracture Me andDestroy Me, in print for the first time ever. It also features an exclusive look into Juliette’s journal and a preview of Ignite Me, the hotly anticipated final novel of the series.

Destroy Me tells the events between Shatter Me and Unravel Me from Warner’s point of view. Even though Juliette shot him in order to escape, Warner can’t stop thinking about her—and he’ll do anything to get her back. But when the Supreme Commander of The Reestablishment arrives, he has much different plans for Juliette. Plans Warner cannot allow.

Fracture Me is told from Adam’s perspective and bridges the gap betweenUnravel Me and Ignite Me. As the Omega Point rebels prepare to fight the Sector 45 soldiers, Adam's more focused on the safety of Juliette, Kenji, and his brother. The Reestablishment will do anything to crush the resistance . . . including killing everyone Adam cares about.

The Shatter Me series is perfect for fans who crave action-packed young adult novels with tantalizing romance like Divergent and The Hunger Games. This captivating story, which combines the best of dystopian and paranormal, was praised as “a thrilling, high-stakes saga of self-discovery and forbidden love” by Ransom Riggs, bestselling author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.


My Review:

OH. MAH. GOSH. I looooooove Tahereh Mafi, okay? She's just the most fantastic person EVER.

I was obsessed with her Shatter Me series, and I was super upset when it ended {I cried, y'all, it was serious business}.

So I finally got around to reading Unite Me, which is two novellas in one {in case ya didn't know}, and I was pumped because I got to "see" things happen again from different perspectives {Adam and Warner} and let me tell you, it was intense. 

We get to see that Warner isn't the monster everyone thinks he is {which is also something you would know if you've read the Series} but we get to see inside his head. Like, for instance, why he had Juliette kill Jenkins. We also get to see why he's so fascinated with Juliette.

And then with Adam we get to see that he isn't as perfect as he seems to be. *Sighs and shakes head* that boy and I had some words... He had his doubts about Juliette's innocence when Kenji got hurt, although he would never admit it out loud. And he was hesitant to go back out to save Juliette when Anderson captured her... KENJI was the one who gave him heck for that even though he was the one had gotten hurt. {which, okay, I see where Adam was coming from because of his brother and all, but still... ouch man, that really hurts.}

Each of the novellas ended at pretty crucial points of the book, and I found myself crying "Nooooooo, you can't do that to me! I need to know what happens!!" both times. Which is actually pretty hilarious, considering that I've already read the whole series several times, and I already know what is going to happen. But I think it was just because it was from different points of view, and I really wanted to see the rest of the story through their eyes and see what they really thought about different things.