Shatter Me | Book 1 | Tahereh Mafi

 

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

                                      Star rating: 2/5 Spice level: 1/10 Cover Art rating: 10/10

Synopsis;

One touch is all it takes. One touch, and Juliette Ferrars can leave a fully grown man gasping for air. One touch, and she can kill.

No one knows why Juliette has such incredible power. It feels like a curse, a burden that one person alone could never bear. But The Reestablishment sees it as a gift, sees her as an opportunity. An opportunity for a deadly weapon.

Juliette has never fought for herself before. But when she's reunited with the one person who ever cared about her, she finds a strength she never knew she had.

Review;

This book was released in 2012 and i vaguely remember seeing it around but it never caught my eye. Also, it had the most awful front cover so i think i just avoided it. Fast forward to now, bookstagram has been hyping this up loads, and it sounded AMAZING. The front covers were striking and powerful so obviously i had to buy the first five... i wish i hadn't! 

The writing technique of striking out words and sentences i think is unique and can allow the reader to fully immerse themselves into the story, as it allows them to understand the main character and their thought process, however i found that Mafi didn't use it to its full potential. It was very randomly done and there were periods when it didn't happen for ages and then it was back. I just felt it was poorly placed throughout the narrative. I also found that there was no depth to the narrative or to any of the characters. We are thrown straight into the main story and never really get to know Juliette or those around her. I almost felt like i was reading the second novel of the series not the first, as characters would mention certain things or past events and they didn't get explained fully, so i never really got to know what was going on. There was little to no world building so when Juliette escapes, i don't really know what type of world they are entering? I know that it is a dystopian world with an oppressive government (almost like The Hunger Games) But i wanted details!! I wanted a map, I wanted to have the first two chapters all about how it came to be and when Juliette found out she had this gift! It almost felt like a really long winded synopsis!! It did reminded me of fan fiction rather than a published novel... but then I reckon I would have loved this back in 2012 when I was 16, so I guess it really comes down to personal preference. I do have 4 more in the series so i might pick it back up, but over the past year I have read such amazingly written narratives that literally give me a hangover when i am finished, I just don't think this series is for me.