Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

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.

My thoughts: I first heard of this book from its trailer and I remember thinking to myself, "Wait...is this Rogue from X-men?" I've been a huge fan of X-men and I immediately looked up this book. There were many mixed reviews but the story still called to me. I was very excited to finally get the chance to read Shatter Me and I found myself liking it very much.

First off, Mafi's writing style was the first thing I noticed. She did not use much punctuation, her words/sentences repeated, phrases were crossed out, and there were many metaphors. The lack of punctuation usually gets on my nerves but it didn't with this book. It had rhythm going on as if it were poetry. The crossing out certain phrases did set me off a bit and luckily this technique was not used as much towards the second half of the book. It made sense, though, why Shatter Me was written this way: to express Juliette's character.

Now, Juliette's character was interesting but not unique. To be locked up for many days without any other human interaction will cause any normal human being to go mad. Not in Juliette's case. Yes, she did show some quirks on how solitary life affected her but she was still pretty sane. Maybe because she did lead most of her life without friends was perhaps the reason why she was able to cope with being locked up. I felt sorry for her because of her "gift" and her treatment by her parents. I could not imagine what kind of life that would be.

Furthermore, her character was very similar to that of Rogue: she drained people's energy with skin to skin contact and was incredibly strong. Though her character was done before, I still enjoyed reading how Juliette tried to get away from The Reestablishment.

I was hooked when reading this book. I found myself staying up at night. The world that was described made me hope that our world would not turn that way either. Also, the male characters were entertaining. Warner made me curse, Adam made me sigh, James made me want to hug him, and Kenji made me laugh. I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

In all, though Juliette was not a unique character, I was drawn into the story from page one. I gave it: