Shatter me by Tahereh Mafi

Synopsis: Juliette hasn’t touched anyone in exactly 264 days.

                  The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal. As long as she doesn’t hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don’t fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

                 The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war– and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she’s exactly what they need right now.

                 Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

My thoughts: L-O-V-E-I-T! It’s beautiful, exciting, cute, adorable… everything! We are presented to Juliette, a girl with some sort of gift/curse where she can’t touch anyone. Because of that, she’s been imprisoned for more than 3 years, without ever seeing someone or even talking. Then, one beautiful day, she receives the news that she is going to have a new roommate, but instead of a girl, a super hot-cute-sweet guy named Adam shows up at her cell. She feels that she knows him, but doesn’t remember from where or when.

                Suddenly, her life takes a turn up and she finds herself free and dragged to the headquarters of The Reestablishment, where some guy named Warner has plans for her and her power.

                But she is not alone anymore, because Adam is with her. They have a past together – that I’m not telling, but I can tell that is beautiful and he is so reliable and trustful – and in order to be together, they have to fight Warner, his security, Adam’s colleagues from the army – for which he joined to find her – and the whole Reestablishment. He is immune to her touch, which make things very interesting, especially their scenes together.

                What I loved about this book are basically two things: the extremely detailed writing, telling about Juliette’s almost madness, her suffering, her desire for Adam. The author used many metaphors to express the girl’s desire for freedom. She kept imagining about a white bird with golden details that was flying away and she wished she could go with him. Sometimes I thought that she was the bird itself, after I thought that it represented her future, then Adam and so on.

                The second thing that I liked was the fact that the author is Islamic or Muslim, – I don’t know exactly which religion is the correct one – since these religions are very restricted when related to a woman’s will and voice. Although she is from California, I believe the religion’s beliefs don’t change that much. She is very creative and sensitive, her kissing scenes are very detailed, as well as the fighting, and Juliette’s thoughts are so deep that in the beginning I actually thought that I was her! Tahereh made a sensational romance, mixing X-men – [SPOILER] when Juliette finds the resistance and everyone has powers like her, it reminds me of the scene in the second movie of X-men, and Wolverine finds a place with all the mutants, that are “ruled” by Magneto – The Host from Stephanie Meyer, – when Melanie finds the hideout of the resistance, together with the guy that she likes (if I’m not mistaken) – and sci-fi.

                The only thing that I didn’t like was that, sometimes, she – Juliette – had very confusing thoughts, but I think that was all part of her madness, so I can’t actually blame her.

                The last thing that remains is the cover: very simple. Maybe too simple for me. After I finished my reading, I thought that if Juliette appeared with some rags, just showing her face and made some highlights in her eyes would be pretty cool too, like she was trying to hide herself, her powers – that she tries most of the time, except with Adam – but never forgetting who she was, what she was capable of doing, that even with her dark past, she was never going to forget about herself nor her beliefs.

Rate: