Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3)

by Tahereh Mafi

[ladygrey]

I can't think clearly but I'm pretty sure this is a 4 star book. Because from the opening chapter it was just devastatingly enthralling. I do love these characters and [a:Taherah Mafi|4637539|Tahereh Mafi|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png] is such a good author.

But that's also the source of my one disappointment that I can't get past yet. Adam.
It's wasn't even the romance because I love her and Warner and Mafi explained the dissolution of their relationship really well and I thought it was emotionally honest. She created these polar views of Juliette in the novellas where Warner saw her strength and always believed incredible things of her and Adam ended up expecting her to be weak. Mafi's a good enough author to create that dynamic and shift the reader's affections so drastically.

Which is why I don't understand why Adam is such a one dimensional character. Mafi is a better author than that, she's proven it time and again. But all Adam does in this book is yell. And all he did in most of the last book is yell. He doesn't listen at all to Juliette when they talk - he's completely irrational and he yells.

And over and over again people say that he's not acting like himself. They're right because he was much more interesting and dimensional in the first book. He was kind and patient and thoughtful and funny. Then Kenji one day said he just felt angry for no reason. So I kept expecting Adam's relentless anger to be someone's power they were projecting. I kept waiting for that wrinkle in the story and it never came. Because he was acting so different from the first book. But there was never that moment there he came back to himself and started acting like a human being again.

And that whole moment where he learned to control his power - I kept waiting for that to come back around, in the battle with Anderson or something. For it to matter in a way that it never did because there was so much potential there to do something with it.

So, in the end I was disappointed by my own expectations. I just still can't understand how a writer who is so good, who calls out everything in the story - every time a character is being dumb or every plot contrivance - who is so good at being honest about her story and her characters could write one of the main ones so one dimensionally.

But now that I know how it ends, and what she does and doesn't do, I'll probably be able to go back and reread it and enjoy the way she writes (I mean, seriously, the way she writes!) and what the characters go through and everything.

Oh! and I wanted so much more of Warner and Adam being brothers. And James! It was like this whole other really good part that had nothing to do with Juliette and romance and I wanted more. James and Warner were pretty awesome and hilarious, though.

It's actually a pretty funny book. And I do love how she calls out everything and in this one also reveals everything. It really is a 4 star book if for no other reason than that I could quote it to pieces.