Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2)

by Tahereh Mafi

"Juliette has escaped to Omega Point, the headquarters of the rebel resistance and a safe haven for people with abilities like hers. She is finally free from The Reestablishment and their plans to use her as a weapon, but Warner, her former captor, won't let her go without a fight."--

Juliette escapes to a safe haven, where she is free from The Reestablishment and their plans to use her as a weapon, but Warner, her former captor, won't let go without a fight. The plot contains profanity and sexual violence. Book #2

• ISBN10: 0062085565
• ISBN13: 9780062085566
• Publish Date: 5 February 2013
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 496
• Language: English

Reviews

[liz089]

Re-read.

Ohh how I love this series, it is still just as good as I remember :) Love Warner/Aaron so much in this one 3 How they interact with each other is just beautiful.. So much beautiful writing in this one !! On to the next one !!

[Kim Deister]

This series just keeps getting better and better and better. All of the books have been deep and emotionally charged... and pretty emotionally disturbing when you think about the world that these characters live in. But this one, in my opinion, took it to a whole new level.

Watching Juliette grow and change is so fascinating. She was so devoid of human interaction that it left her more than a little socially awkward and emotionally damaged. Seeing her experience the world, even in the state that it is, is rather refreshing. But her story wasn't all happiness. Parts of it were just heartbreaking. I wanted her to have everything she wanted. She earned it, after a lifetime of being shunned, used, and treated like a monster. But nothing in life, not even in fantasy, is perfect.

And we meet a new evil in this book. Anderson, Warner's father and the leader of the all-powerful Reestablishment. He makes Warner look like a fluffy bunny rabbit, which is truly saying something.

Team Adam. Team Warner. Team Adam. Team Warner. I go back and forth, practically from page to page! There are moments when everything in you aches for Adam and you root for him with all of your heart. And then in the next moment, all of that is for the unexpected Warner.

Things to love...

--The depth of the characters. Love them or hate them, they are intense.
--The wold of Juliette, Warner, and Adam is scarily realistic, making you shudder at the possibilities.

Things I wanted more/less of...

--More Kenji! I love him! He's funny and hilarious, and sometimes the most supportive of Juliette.

My Recommendation: Love dystopia? Then run, don't walk, and get these books!

[Berls]

My Initial Reaction...

I was so relieved that Unravel Me didn't go down the path I worried it would after finishing Shatter Me. Overall I'm loving this series, though Juliette is driving me a bit crazy!

Note:Some minor series spoilers.

The Narration...

I think Kate Simses is a perfect narrator for this series. As I already said in my review for Shatter Me, there's a poetic sound to Unravel Me that I feel needs to be read aloud and read aloud well. Kate Simses nails it for me.

The Characters...

I've had a real reversal in how I feel about Juliette with Unravel Me. In Shatter Me I loved her. But she's just so wishy-washy, "poor me" in Unravel Me that I got tired of her. I understand she's had a hard life, but she's surrounded now by people who've also had a hard life, who also have had to deal with these disturbing differences about themselves and all she can think about is how bad her situation is!

And the relationship between her and Adam is so frustrating. She let's it consume her - and I get that it's different than just a first teenage relationship... this is the first person who's ever been able to even TOUCH her. But come on girl, don't let that cloud your ability to think for yourself and make decisions. Surprisingly, Adam grew on my with Unravel Me. I think because he's having to face some pretty rough realizations and I think he's dealing better than Juliette. But he's still not my favorite.

My favorite is tied - for two entirely different reasons and roles - between Warner and Kenji. Kenji is the friend that Juliette really needs. The person who cares for her but doesn't want to BE With her. I feel like she really needed a non-romantic relationship like this. Because not only does Kenji show her she can have friends, but like a true friend - HE TELLS HER HOW IT IS. I can't tell you how much I liked his willingness to tell her off. And I really want to know him better. I loved hearing about him as a kid through Castle's eyes.

And then there's Warner. God, he's still such a mess. And still playing the role of villain in a lot of ways. And yet I adore him. I think him and Juliette are perfect for each other because they've both been told their whole lives they are monsters. Juliette because of what she can't help but do. Warner because that's who he thinks he has to be. Both are trying to tell the other they can be so much more. Both are right. And both are stubbornly not hearing the other. Can't wait to see where that goes.

The Story...

I had been super worried that Unravel Me would go all X-Men after the first book. I'm so glad it didn't - I like X-Men but I wanted this to be more unique. And it is.

The basic story line for Unravel Me revolves around the resistance group at Omega Point that Juliette and Adam joined at the end of Shatter Me. They are training, learning more about themselves and preparing to fight the Reestablishment. Things aren't quite as perfect as they might have seemed at first glance, not to mention Warner's diligently seeking them out. I loved every twist Tahreh Mafi threw into Unravel Me - there's lots of unexpected challenges and lots of personal development. I'm actually torn a bit about the Resistance now - nothing is black and white, which I love. We got some SERIOUS, kick-butt action in Unravel Me, complete with superpowers galore! A really great balance between the conflict with the Reestablishment and the internal conflicts.

Also - as a note, I seriously recommend reading the novella Destroy Me before reading Unravel Me. The two overlap for the first bit of Unravel Me and it really changes your perception of the events in a great, exciting way.

Concluding Sentiments...

I'm thrilled I found this series and am really invested in the characters and can't wait to see where it goes. Unravel Me ended on a bit of cliff hanger (not a bad one) so I'm thankful that the next book is out already!

[boghunden]

… Wow! Bare wow! Hold nu op, hvor jeg bare elskede den her bog! James, Adam, Kenji, Warner, Juliette. Alt var bare fantastisk!

Der var alligevel en ting, der irriterede mig. For at starte med den først, så var det, at det egentlig bare var en lang optakt til krig. Jeg håbede hele tiden, at nu ville den starte, men det gjorde den bare ikke rigtig… :/ Det er så også det eneste negative, jeg har at sige.

Den måde verdenen bliver beskrevet på er fortsat rigtig god! Den er faktisk endnu bedre i den her bog, fordi endnu flere ting bliver forklaret. Jeg er helt betaget. Personerne i bogen var også virkelig skønne.

Det giver et meget godt billede af, hvordan jeg havde det med bogen. Den var virkelig, virkelig, VIRKELIG god!! Jeg er (stadig) alt for eksatisk, til at kunne skrive en fornuftig anmelde, for den er bare goooood!

Hvad sproget angår, så flød det meget nemmere for mig den her gang. Jeg havde vænnet mig til Mafis (irriterende!) sprog, og derfor gik det også meget hurtigere med at sortere i, hvad der var relevant og hvad jeg bare skulle glemme. Det er helt sikkert ikke alle, der vil kunne udholde sproget, og det er virkelig en skam, for selve historien er virkelig en oplevelse værdig!

[Nessa Luna]

Read this review, and many more on my blog October Tune!

The second book in the Shatter Me series. I really liked the first book, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the second book. Still, it took me a while to actually read the book, because of no particular reason at all, but hey, I’ve finally finished it! Beware this review might have some tiiiiiny spoilers if you haven’t read the book yet!

This book had quite some action, which I love. First there was the whole thing with people being abducted and Juliette going there to get them back, I really liked that bit. Then there was the battle/war thing at the end, and I personally thought it was a bit rushed. I would have loved to hear more about the actual battle instead of Juliette being taken away almost immediately (but of course, she’s the main character so we follow her).

I don’t think we were introduced to any new characters in this book, but that might just be because it’s been a while since I’ve read the first book, and all the people from Omega Point just sounded familiar to me. We did meet Warner’s dad in this book, and he is just the textbook example of an asshole. Wow, I really hated him. I might have laughed because of his name (Anderson, pfff), but he was just a dick. Yeah.

My favourite characters of this book are definitely ‘the girls’ (aka Sonya and Sara) and Jamie, I just love Jamie, aww!

The romance in this book was intense, wow. That’s actually the only thing I can say about it, I don’t really know what else to say. And I am not going to pick a team, or well, I might just pick team Juliette because she’s awesome.

Personally, I would have liked to read less romance and more action. I am just not a romance fan, especially not if there’s a love triangle, and though I really like these books, I would have liked it better if there weren’t so much romantic scenes. Yeah.

There was a bit of a plot twist halfway through the book, and I had kind of expected it for some reason. I wasn’t as surprised as I was supposed to be, I guess.

But wow, I just love Tahereh Mafi’s writing. Just
the way she writes
some of the sentences
is so awesome and

s o m e t i m e s
when she writes like that, I just really like it. I’ve never seen an author do something like this before. Though while reading Shatter Me, I sometimes got annoyed at the sentences that had a line through them, I got used to them in the end, and I eventually even liked it!

There was one little pet peeve of mine, the numbers weren’t written out. They were written like 1, 2, 3; while I honestly would have written them as one, two, three. I always do that with most numbers (at least those below one-hundred, unless it’s a date of course) and I don’t know, I was just a tiny bit annoyed whenever I saw a number in a sentence. (It looked a bit weird, imo).

In the end, Unravel Me was a very good sequel, and I just can’t wait to get my hands on Ignite Me! Because I just want to know how the story ends!

[ladygrey]

You definitely have to read [b:Destroy Me|13623150|Destroy Me (Shatter Me, #1.5)|Tahereh Mafi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1340398466s/13623150.jpg|19226840] before you get into this one.

But, oh, this is good. Mafi has a way of wrapping her story around your heart and you just feel so much - not emotion but the pulsing of your blood and your breath so acutely for two hours while you read; the weight of silence and devastation; the rush of pain and of ecstasy and of emptiness. I think her language and her metaphors are the sort of thing you either love or can't stand and I seriously love them.

Some of what happened in this book, as this story evolved, I totally saw coming. There were things in the middle I expected like when they kidnapped Warner and he was at Omega Point with them - totally knew that was going to happen at some point even without reading Destroy Me and things at the end like his mother living in that house - from the first book she was obviously a secret he was hiding and so as soon as they found the house I knew that's where she lived. The beginning I didn't expect even though I wasn't surprised because that happens in YA books - they can't be together until the end - but I didn't think they'd get pulled apart like that. But the one thing I didn't see coming at all, even after reading Destroy Me, was how much I liked Warner. How much I love Warner. He is complicated and interesting and powerful and tender and such a good character. The hot villain to like this year is The Darkling from [b:Shadow and Bone|10194157|Shadow and Bone (Grisha Verse, #1)|Leigh Bardugo|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1339533695s/10194157.jpg|15093325] and Warner puts The Darkling to shame. All it took to turn him around for me was one piece of knowledge from Destroy Me; one bit of context and his villainy was completely undone. And he found her notebook and it completely changed him. It made him human and when he was vulnerable and desperate and still strong and fierce it was really interesting. I get that part of him that is unflinching, that is actually just like Juliette because if she knew what he knew she'd have done the exact same thing. And I get the part of him that sees Castle as sentimental and unprepared to lead them into any kind of a future. I get the hard part of him that Juliette doesn't like and I like him all the more for the dimensions in his character. I like that the changes in his character didn't alter who he was - they weren't this massive recharacterization. It was just a shift that made him more complicated in the best way.

also:


And it sort of makes me feel bad for Adam who is the love interest but who isn't nearly as interesting because he really didn't have anything to do in this book. I would have liked to have seen more of him - for him to have something to do with Kenji or James or something that made him an individual and something more than just Juliette's boyfriend. Because I get that Juliette likes him and would choose him, but as a reader I don't share that attachment and so I need Adam to be something more.

I like Kenji a lot - I like that he says the sorts of things you want to say in those situations and he doesn't pull any punches and he's a fun, tough guy. It's odd though, as much as he's right that in the middle of the world falling down her personal life doesn't matter that much I still understood why the story kept going back to that and kept going back to those emotions. Because unless you're as self-controlled as Warner, even when the world is falling apart your relationships and your choices and your emotions still matter, maybe more so than any other time.

But I really liked the end. I liked the part where she realized how much of her life had been about being nervous and about trying to make everyone else around her comfortable and how she was done with that. It made sense with her character - she spent her childhood being abused by her parents and then spent 3 years in isolation in an asylum. For Castle or Kenji to expect her to come out of that and not be apologizing all the time for sort of existing, to expect her to just start making friends and fitting in was ridiculous. They were totally right at the same time - she was being childish and immature. For a lot of the book Juliette, despite her powers, is a kind of weak, passive character. I'm interested to see her the way Warner has wanted to see her; to see her owning her strength and being a force in the world.

I’m falling apart and into his heart and I’m a disaster.

[Annie Jackson]

I’m falling apart and into his heart and I’m a disaster.

This is the second book in the series and it was amazing. The series just keeps on getting better and better. In this book Juliette deals with learning how to live with her powers and testing what she can do.

This was such a page turner book and it made me sad that I had to wait a while for the third book.

March 2020 edit:
CHAPTER 62!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Go on, Tahereh, rip my heart out of my chest and throw it on the ground.

[inlibrisveritas]

Finally! It feels like it took me forever to get around to this one, even though I read Shatter Me six months ago and that’s a short wait for me. Unravel Me picks up three weeks after Shatter Me ends and interconnects with a few scenes from the novella Destroy Me.

The one thing that remains strong with these books is the writing, which is so poetic and unique. I honestly think that if I picked up any other book that had so many words crossed out or separated I’d go nuts. The editor in me just can’t handle it, but for some reason I welcome it with the Shatter Me books. It provides a more personal experience and it’s surprising how you can create tension just by pressing enter a few times. At any rate we’re back into the thick of it with this one and things really heat up…in more ways than one. War, relationship issues, budding friendships, and of course the love triangle. We get to see more of the Resistance, how they operate and some of the interesting powers that the other residents have. One of the best things about this is the fact that it acknowledges the grey areas involved in human lives and more importantly war. Nothing is as black and white as we want it to be.

I really enjoy the overall plot but this one felt a bit slow for me and I kind of blame that on all the attention given to Adam, who I personally find boring. He’s a good guy, he’s sweet and he loves Juliette but I’m at the point where if they are in a room together I immediately want them separated. I feel terribly for them both and the situation they have to deal with but at the same time I just don’t want to hear it anymore. The surprising relationship with Warner is more my speed because there is more to it, there is more to develop and understand than there is with Adam. Warner is a bag of cats, he’s rather pretty to look at but you can just see the crazy rolling off the guy…and you definitely know you don’t want to open the bag but curiosity (and humanity) just makes you want to. That being said I don’t necessarily want to see a full relationship between them unless some things change, but I definitely love the tension! As for the other cast of characters I’m super glad to have more time with Kenji, who is a lot of fun even when he’s being weird, and I enjoyed getting to know Castle more.

Overall I loved the book but the added annoyance of the Adam/Juliette whine-fest kind of dropped it a bit for me. I can’t wait to read book three!