Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1)

by Tahereh Mafi

[clementine]

So, I went back and forth between giving this book three and four stars. In reality I'd give it 3.5 stars, but there were just too many issues for me to round up.

One of the things everyone is talking about is the flowery prose, so I'll touch on that first. I thought some of the metaphorical language was really clever, and actually worked. But a lot of it (like, the majority of it) really DIDN'T work, and it seemed like we went from chunks of time where it was just straightforward narration to a few pages of figurative language, which was just weird. Aside from that, I didn't mind the narrative style. It is pretty gimmicky, but I thought it worked for the situation.

The characters... ah, the characters. Juliette didn't really bother me, although I didn't particularly LIKE her either. It was annoying how she's ~*~omg so beautiful~*~ like YA dystopian heroines usually are. Would it kill people to have bland or ugly main characters? We're in a polluted world with a shortage of food, pretty sure most people aren't going to be looking that great. That goes for Adam, too, and yes, it was really annoying how she couldn't stop talking about his fucking eyes. I've seen a lot of blue eyes in my life, and while they are pretty, none of them have been "blue and bottomless like the deepest part of the ocean" or "a shade of blue in a midnight sky". I'm sorry, but NO. STOP.

While we're on the topic of romance, I'm just getting increasingly frustrated with this aspect of YA dystopian. We. don't. need. romance. If the story itself is good, there's just no need for romance. The circumstances surrounded Juliette and Adam's relationship were just really far-fetched to begin with, and then there's the fact that I seriously do not give a shit about their relationship. I want to know what's going to happen with Juliette's powers, Warner, the Reestablishment, the colony (I forgot its name already, lol). That stuff is interesting! Winston and Kenji were interesting! James was interesting! Juliette's parents were beyond interesting! Adam and Juliette's stupid romance was not interesting.

In the end, I read this book really fast and did get sucked into it. It's fast-paced and something a little new, if only because of the mildly gimmicky narration. It kept me entertained, which is always good. But there were a lot of things that bugged me about it which kept me from fully enjoying it.