Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

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"You can't touch me," I whisper.

I'm lying, is what I don't tell him.

He can touch me, is what I'll never tell him.

But things happen when people touch me.

Strange things.

Bad things.

No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon.

But Juliette has plans of her own.

After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever.

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi is a thrilling romance that soars above its bleak dystopian setting.

The love story is full-blown and unabashed, but not over the top. It succeeded for me for two reasons. First, Mafi's writing, especially at the beginning, has a confessional, poetic quality that hypnotized me.

As Shatter Me is told in Juliette's point of view, the tender lyricism instantly conveyed her vulnerable emotional state. When the novel opens, Juliette is in a claustrophobic cell of concrete with only a small square window to the outside. She has been imprisoned in the asylum for 264 days, having been given up by her parents to the authorities for some unspeakable horror having to do with her touch. From an early age Juliette has been ostracized and isolated, feared and despised even by her own family. She believes herself to be a monster, untouchable physically and in every other way possible. She has only her imagination for company.

More than anything, she longs to connect with another human being, and this desperate flower of hope that blossoms in Juliette despite life’s ugliness was heartrending.

Though vulnerable, Juliette is not weak. We see her spine of steel when she is betrayed and then taken as prisoner by the Re-establishment, the military government ruling the wasteland of the future world.

I like how Mafi explores the dual nature of Juliette's condition, whether it is a curse or a gift, depending on how it is used. And that monstrosity has nothing to do with deadly power or might, but in how one chooses to use it. Although society's heinous actions could have, should have, bred a monster in Juliette, her inherent goodness has led to the opposite.

Which leads me to my second reason: the love story has admirable depth, in that the two lovers fall in love for all the right reasons, each other’s inner beauty and unerring moral compass. This may sound simple and idealistic but Mafi pulls it off. Every romantic fiber of my being trilled to these achingly beautiful scenes.

"'I'll find a way to talk to you,' he says, and his hands are reeling me in and my face is pressed against his chest and the world is suddenly brighter, bigger, beautiful. The world suddenly means something to me, the possibility of humanity means something to me, the entire universe stops in place and spins in the other direction and I'm the bird.

"I'm the bird and I'm flying away."

Despite the dream-like sections, the plot is solid with action and suspense. The Reestablishment’s sudden interest in Juliette leads to frightening situations. There were several scenes that made me cringe, but the one in a torture chamber was almost unbearable for me to read.

The outcome of that scene left me hanging; though I discovered something important to the plot, I had unanswered questions. Another scene involving cross-fire seemed to have too many easy coincidences and leaps of logic. And the ending did not quite match the tone of the rest of the book. Although, the synopsis on my ARC does give fair warning: “In this electrifying debut, Tahereh Mafi presents a world as riveting as The Hunger Games and a superhero story as thrilling as The X-Men.” You can see in which the direction the rest of the planned trilogy is headed.

I leave you with my favorite passage from Shatter Me, one that will likely be among my list of all-time best:

"I spent my life folded between the pages of books.

"In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction."



Release date: November 15, 2011

Thank you very much to the Amazon Vine Program for providing a copy for me to review!