Review - Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

A single touch could bring instant death.  Anyone who touches her risks their lives and most perish, unable to tear themselves away.

Okay so…again…I’ve finally jumped onto the dystopian bandwagon.  This time it’s not in regards to false worlds where factions reign supreme.  No, instead, we find ourselves in a world that has been broken down.  The luxuries in life have been replaced with the bare necessities to just get by.  Ultimately food and shelter and a place to stay out of the way and hidden from the command of “The Reestablishment” has become a way of life.

By now if you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me introduce you to the exciting first novel in this dystopian world, Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi.

We enter into the story through the eyes of Juliette who we find has been locked within an asylum for exactly 264 days.  And believe me…she’s counted.  Not just that, she’s taken note of the exact measurements of the space in which she lives and for how many hours it’s been since she’d been in contact with another human being.  6,336…in case you were wondering.

Life has pretty much dealt Juliette a crappy hand.  She’s always had the ability, with a single touch, to cause harm and ultimate death to whomever dares touch her.  Any X-Men fans here?  

X-Men reference:  think Rogue.  Yeah that’s pretty much Juliette.

Her parents had always been scared of the ability.  Her teachers even called her a walking weapon.  Suffice it to say, then, it was no surprise when, at 14, her parents had her sent away to the insane asylum for a murder she had no idea she could commit.

Now, fast forward to her life within the asylum.  Juliette is pretty shocked when she ends up getting a roommate by the name of Adam.  Now she recognizes Adam from her previous school and the fact that he’d been genuinely nice to her when other kids were not.  She doesn’t think he recognizes her though, and continues to try and keep to herself.  Unavoidable due to the fact that Adam does continually try to make contact with her in many ways.

It isn’t long after Adam is dropped into her altered world, when her world goes completely topsy-turvy yet again. 

A.      She’s released from the Asylum. 

B.  Adam isn’t a patient within the asylum…he’s actually a guard. 

AND

 C.  Who is this Warner that seems so happy to have her 

       in his “possession”?

Now, I won’t give you any more details, or spoil the ending but…I’ll leave you with this.  Juliette isn’t the pushover she sees herself as being and things just got a whole lot more interesting within her world.  

Hunger Games?  No.  

Divergent?  No.  

Shatter Me lives within its own succinct world and creates its own genre.  If you haven’t given this book a fair chance, you should!  Tahereh Mafi really delivered with this first novel and I cannot wait to continue reading Juliette’s story.  

All in all, I gave this book a 5 out of 5 stars on GoodReads.