Shatter Me (Shatter Me, 1); Tahereh Mafi

I am very late to the party on this series, I have accepted I will be late to most of these kinds of series. In my defense, post-apocalyptic and dystopian YA novels aren’t my go-to genre much anymore. But I have friends who love these books, and, well, it was time. Plus, Mafi is such a beautiful writer, her stories so full of delicious prose, and “Shatter Me” was no exception. Though this first book felt very much like a “series” book with very little getting resolved come the end.

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“Shatter Me” is incredibly character focused, so much so that the particulars of what’s wrong with the world or how it happened, is not focused on. Like, at all. All we know is that things are terrible, and Juliette has a devastating power that causes her own family to fear her and abandon her to a prison that is little better than a concentration camp. There is a fanatic, militarized “savior” group that has kind of taken over that Juliette finds herself at the mercy of, and there is a rebel group supposedly opposing the Reestablishment, but those dynamics aren’t explored in this book. Instead, Mafi spends her time on showing, through beautiful prose and strike through text, the state of Juliette's mind as she slowly comes back from the brink of insanity. The writing and the poetic look at Juliette’s character, is what you should read this book for, because it truly is stunning. It was almost worth how dark this book can be at times, and how little about the world and her powers are actually addressed.

At times it honestly feels like not much happens in this book beyond a tug of war match for Juliette between Adam and Warner. You get glimpses of what the world was like before in order to make the bleakness of the world now all the starker. For a YA novel, Mafi does not shy away from babies being harmed in this book, that’s all I’m saying. But all the characters are so marvelously complex, including the villains which was refreshing for a YA novel where sometimes the bad guys seem to be bad “just because”. I really just wish the book hadn’t ended where it did, that we got a little more about the opposing force to the Reestablishment, and all these people Juliette suddenly finds herself with, hence the 4.5 stars. Like, it’s a good thing I already have the next book in the series, that’s all I’m saying