Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2)

by Tahereh Mafi

[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.

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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.