Review: Shatter Me

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I have wanted to read this for months. MONTHS. I placed a hold on it at the library finally when I wasn't having any luck getting it through BooksFreeSwap. It sounded SO GOOD. Sure the concept was familiar (Rogue from X-Men, duh), but it sounded like it had been done completely differently.

Well, my eagerness and excitement was disappointed. The strikethroughs throughout the entire book put me right off. The stream-of-consciousness style writing was done very poorly. And in the end, everything happens just a little too easily, and remains unexplained in every way at the conclusion of the book.

**SPOILERS BELOW**



Obviously it is set up for a sequel. Juliette becomes the "Rogue" character complete with special bodysuit and gloves so she won't hurt anyone. Hell, Adam even says she looks like a superhero. The guys in the room can't stop staring at her. She's so beautiful and stunning and *gag*. She's joined an elite force of rebels, many of whom have X-Men-like powers. Seriously? Seriously? Did the editors of this book not even see the movies? Come on.

With regard to the writing style, I wrote like this myself. When I was 13. And sometimes when I was in college, because I thought it made my writing sound "cool." It didn't. It made me sound moody and crazy. And while Juliette may be moody and crazy (despite her assertions that she isn't), this would have been SO MUCH BETTER had it been written in third-person, not first-person.

The "romantic" scenes were so ridiculous I actually said out loud, "Are these two ever going to stop kissing??" Here's an example:

My face is in his hands and my lips are at his lips and he's kissing me and I'm oxygen and he's dying to breathe. His body is almost on top of mine, one hand in my hair, the other feeling its way down my silhouette, slipping behind my knee to pull me closer, higher, tighter. He drops kisses down my throat like ecstasy, electric energy searing into me, setting me on fire. I'm on the verge of combusting from the sheer thrill of every moment. I want to dive into his being, experience him with all 5 senses, drown in the waves of wonder enveloping my existence.

And another:

And he's breathing harder than I am and suddenly his lips are on my neck and I'm gasping and dying and clutching at his arms and he's touching me touching me touching me and I'm thunder and lightning and wondering when the hell I'll be waking up.

Is this for real? I mean, did the author really think anyone would be able to take this kind of thing seriously? It's not even hot.

Look, I really hate being mean in a review when I know an author has done a lot of work on something and may be extremely proud of it. Good for Mafi, if she is. Obviously someone out there liked it enough to publish it, thinking the gaggle of teen girls would compare it to Twilight instead of the X-Men. But this is just an X-Men rip-off with a crappy romance thrown in. Personally, I would like my time back.

I was told not to read it, and I should have listened. But when you've been anticipating reading something for so long, it's hard to just pass it up. I wish I had listened.

View all my reviews