#uh absolutely despise the lust arc but

[gelthefunkyblob]

new style practice with my favourite venomania ladies

[fae-fucker]

Review: Shatter Me

by Tahereh Mafi

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.

*This review contains vague spoilers.*

I uh … I’m having a hard time figuring out where to even begin with this one, lads. I guess I’ll start with the absolute basics:

This book is not a dystopia. This is a superhero (supervillain?) origin story. I didn’t know this going in and it didn’t feel like it until the very end. With heavy-handed romance, heavy-handed writing, heavy-handed messages, and a plodding plot that I’m pretty sure sucked about 25 years out of my goddamn life.

*rubs hands together*

Well, with that in mind, let’s do this!

The “Writing”

Tahereh Mafi isn’t some backwater Harlequin mommy porn writer, nu-uh! She’s an Artiste, and as such, her art isn’t merely art, it’s Arté.

When a sentence could be five words, Mafi makes it a paragraph. When a metaphor could make sense, Mafi confuses your PLEBEIAN MIND with her MYSTIC WRITING POWERS, to the point where nothing fucking makes sense anymore and you’re just scratching your head, wondering how the fuck supposedly near-catatonic Juliette is able to come up with such convoluted comparisons. When other writers use pages to put words on them for people to read, Mafi puts maybe one word at the very top for four or five pages for the DRAMA of it all, except unlike when we all freaked out about Stephenie Meyer doing that, here it’s Artistic.

Jokes aside, this book is the epitome of everything I hate about purple prose. As someone who violently dislikes purple prose (because usually it’s done horribly by people who want to show off how many big words they know rather than evoke any sort of emotion), I knew going in that this book wouldn’t be for me, but I wasn’t expecting this.

Metaphors are long ang confusing, the prose and the rhythm are all off, the dialogue is atrocious and cartoonish, and Juliette’s thoughts are painfully obtuse despite her supposed “deep” personality. Except sometimes her thoughts are so convoluted and specific that it clashes with how dumb she is. Sometimes she thinks of the lackadaisical ennui of the uncaring sun, sometimes she compares her boyfriend’s eyes to buckets of water. It’s a huge, disjointed mess of word vomit.

People have defended Juliette’s narration as being a result of her solitary confinement, but those people’s opinions are bad and wrong and you shouldn’t listen to them, and I will explain to you why when I discuss Juliette’s “personality” in the character section of this review.

This book’s main “thing” is Juliette crossing out words and sentences, but it’s not consistent enough to actually mean anything or tell us anything about Juliette. It also happens in dialogue, which is fucking baffling. How do characters speak the words that are crossed out? Presumably they don’t, and I’m guessing that it’s supposed to represent what Juliette thinks people want to say but don’t, but then why the fuck would you put the crossed-out shit inside the quotes with the actual dialogue? Don’t!!!! Do that!!!! You’re clearly not equipped to ignore the rules of grammar yet, Mrs Mafi! You need to level up!!!

Sometimes, things that are implied to be true are crossed out. Sometimes, it’s the propaganda that Juliette knows is untrue that’s crossed out. With both the truth and the lies, Juliette’s thoughts vs her feelings, being crossed out without any rhyme or reason, we can never be entirely certain what the fuck the strikethroughs are supposed to represent.

If, for example, only the lies were crossed out, it would imply Juliette was aware that they’re lies and isn’t afraid to confront the truth. If only the truth was crossed out, then it would mean Juliette is in denial, knowing something is wrong but believing it anyway.

Instead, the strikethrough bullshit is just … there. What it means changes from instance to instance, and because of that, it loses all the impact and significance it could’ve had and ends up meaning nothing.

In short: the writing in this book is a whole-ass mess and nothing you say will convince me otherwise.

The Characters

Juliette’s mind is perfectly fine at all times, characters even praise her for being able to withstand literal psychological torture unlike all the other female WEAKLINGS in the facility. Her obnoxious inner monologues are just there for show, because Juliette is Deep and Troubled but in a sexy, dramatic way that doesn’t actually impact her as a person or her life at all. She doesn’t suffer from any mental illness or trauma that would’ve been brought on by 260+ days of nonstop psychological torture and years of emotional abuse and neglect.

How do I know that? Because she doesn’t believe any of the bullshit she spouts. It’s made perfectly clear that Juliette only thinks in metaphors because that’s just her obnoxious “personality”. Sometimes one of the Boys says something and she claims that her knees shatter or something similar. Except she doesn’t react as if they were, as if she felt the pain. She only thinks that because … Idk. It’s deep. Shut the fuck up.

I think her narration is supposed to imply that Juliette is smart, but that’s hilariously contrasted by her constant, and I mean fucking CONSTANT thirst and attraction to both Adam and Warner, the latter being especially jarring considering how she keeps saying she despises him and is disgusted by him.

She ogles and fawns over these men even when she’s in pain or in danger, even when they’re the ones inflicting the pain or threatening her. That’s how fucking horny she is, that’s where Mafi’s priorities lie.

She undermines her own protagonist by having Juliette constantly act like a horny schoolgirl instead of the broken and tortured person she should be after what she’s been through. After years of isolation and discrimination, after 260 days of solitary confinement, this girl still acts just like any other normal horny teenager, and it’s fucking awful to read, because it invalidates everything Juliette has been through and once again puts sex appeal and men higher on the priority list over an honest and realistic portrayal of trauma and isolation.

Speaking of sex appeal …

Warner. Oh Warner. What wonderful potential was lost. I think he’s genuinely interesting, or at least had the potential to be. He’s damaged and he’s troubled and he’s complex, despite how edgy he is. He’s hands-down the most interesting character in the book, and I weep for Mafi’s inability to fucking pace herself because that’s what’s absolutely ruined him for me. Let me explain:

I’m all for redemption arcs, alright? And Warner? He’s … salvageable. With some work and some atonement, I can totally see him becoming a complex anti-hero type. He’s clearly fucked up and the things he does are damaging him.

You know where Mafi fails? You know where she fucking destroys the guy?

She’s constantly describing him as hot. When he’s acting like a terrifying and abusive shithead, Juliette can’t help but think of how the anger makes his green eyes flash. When he takes off his shirt, Juliette claims how disgusted she is by the sight, and then in the same breath describes his perfectly sculpted chest in careful detail.

We’re supposed to find Warner sexy.

We’re supposed to reluctantly be attracted to him, just like Juliette, despite that and sometimes even because he’s a dangerous and abusive jackass.

There’s even a makeout session between Juliette and Warner where she’s complaining about how grossed out she is, but the kissing is described in more sexy and hot detail than any Adam makeout, and Juliette can’t help her attraction to Warner despite her believing he’d just killed the man she loves in cold blood.

Do you undersand my problem? If Warner was just a tragic villain and Juliette pitied him and didn’t feel any, and I mean ANY attraction to the guy, I would 100% accept him later trying to change sides to atone or to make up for the things he did. Aka a proper redemption arc.

But here, he’s already written as attractive to us. He’s already sexy and desireable and alluring. The narrative paints him in a good light by undermining the terrible things he does through constant descriptions of his appearance and Juliette’s obvious lust for him.

And you can say that “Woe, Juliette can’t control her attraction!” and you would still be a dumbass, because guess who can control Juliette’s attraction? Tahereh Mafi. It was Mafi’s conscious decision to make Juliette attracted to Warner, to write him this way as a sexy but dangerous man we’re supposed to root for and want to fix.

And that’s just gross. So whatever excuse or justification or explanation Warner’s actions get in lieu of an actual redemption arc, it won’t matter to me, because it’s already been undermined by how sexy he’s supposed to be despite his damage, and the terrible things he does are only there to make him more “mysterious” and his eventual love interest status more unexpected.

Mafi isn’t interested in writing a redemption arc, she just can’t write a morally ambiguous or mysterious love interest without taking it up to eleven and have him be a fucking unhinged dictator, but it’s ok because he’s still hot enough to bang!

I love redemption arcs. I hate abusers who are painted as attractive.

Adam exists. And what a pointless existence it is! He’s very obviously a decoy love interest, too nice and too basic to be endgame, and just vague and nonthreatening enough to have a sinister plan.

See, girls? Boys who protect you and care about you are actually evil! The boys who abuse you and terrify you are the ones who truly love you!

Kenji is very clearly designed to be quirky and snarky and for the Tumblr fangirls to fawn over to the point where he sticks out like a sore thumb among the rest of the cast. I didn’t like him and found him to be pretty boring without any deviation from the snarky flirty guy archetype.

There are a bunch of other characters that are spoilers and who don’t really matter, but I will say that there is a Black man who’s described as chocolate, so there.

Um. Women? I’m pretty sure the only named women we actually get to see on the page are two identical twins who are basically one entity and they show up in like the last chapter?

Before one of you shouts OMG THERE ARE MORE WOMEN IN THE LATER BOOKS, yeah, probably, I fucking hope so, but I’m not reviewing those books yet, I’m reviewing this one, and it’s one fucking giant sausage fest of hot dudes and faceless mooks.

Dems the fax.

The “Plot”

If you go into this expecting an exploration of the importance of human touch and how the lack of it might impact a person, you’re a dumbass and so am I for making that mistake.

If you’re expecting a gloomy but action-filled dystopia based on some more district/caste/personality oppression, you’re wrong again but at least justified because that’s what this is marketed as.

The stakes and conflict are … are they? Are we sure they even exist? Jury’s still out because I have no idea what Juliette wants aside from sucking Adam’s dick (and Warner’s sometimes). I know what she doesn’t want, I think (?), but I don’t know why she doesn’t want it aside from the “uwu i’m too good and pure and love people too much even tho they’ve shown me nothing but hatred and rejection” crap.

I’m honestly having a hard time figuring out what this book even is about. Supposedly the major plot development is Juliette realizing how powerful she is and how nobody will get to use her anymore, but the first thing happens in the very last chapter out of fucking nowhere, while the last thing doesn’t even matter because up until this point, Juliette has already been spending the entire book refusing to be used in the first place.

Oh, and about the first thing again, where Juliette must realize her power? It’s supposed to be this big epic moment for her at the end of the book, but we see her use her powers to throw around threats to get what she wants several times before that, on people she barely knows. She threatens Kenji just because he makes a few inappropriate comments about her, which is fucking baffling because she refused to even try to hurt Warner even though he’s been nothing but an asshole to her up until that point.

The moment Juliette gets her hands on a gun, she’s suddenly super empowered and has no problem spitting badass one-liners, even though she was a sad woobie pacifist up until that point and who couldn’t even IMAGINE hurting anyone, not even supposed monster Warner. The whole gun thing is weird and vaguely gross tbh, because Juliette genuinely seems to enjoy the power it gives her and I’m not into that.

On a technical level, this book is mostly Juliette being pushed around by men, feeling sorry for herself and clinging to morals that only serve to show how pure and good she is despite making no sense and being odd for someone in her position to have.

There are entire chapters of repeated revelations, where Juliette is sometimes literally dragged around from scene to scene by the hand, and she realizes the same thing over and over, seemingly forgetting it at the start of the chapter just to she can learn it again by the end of it: Warner is a meanie poopy-head who’s willing to hurt, kill, and torture other people for his own gain. Every time he shows this, Juliette acts shocked all over again.

This goes on for about half the book until shit suddenly takes a turn and the book becomes yet another Underground Teenage Rebellion Fighting to Take Down the Man drama, except this time the teenagers are mutants with cool superpowers.

It’s a complete tonal shift and it’s jarring as all heck, but at least there’s no more pretense about this being a dystopia because boy oh boy is it painful to watch Mafi struggle to worldbuild even the slightest concept for this superpowered angstfest.

The Worldbuilding

Important Proper Nouns galore. The book’s website (where I got the blurb) says that this book is “fresh” and “original”.

Yeah let’s uuh … Let’s investigate that statement.

The main evil guys are called the Reestablishment. That’s two letters away from Juliette fighting the establishment.

D-do I need to say more?

I honestly don’t know if I can. It’s like Mafi just sorta took all the other YA dystopian “quirks” and threw them all in without rhyme or reason.

Climate is fucked because of Big Corporate? Yeah. All animals are dead or mutated? Yup. Art and religion is deemed bad and terrible and banned for reasons? Throw that in there too, why not? They’re destroying all languages, English included? O-ok?

We never really … dwell on any of these things or figure out why they happened or how or even where. These things are always brought up together like some sort of checklist of all the bad things that the Reestablishment has done.

And I guess for a superhero story with “pulse-pounding” romance, it doesn’t really have to be that much more complicated, and it serves its function, but on Mafi’s website there’s boasting about how it has the worldbuilding of The Hunger Games and honey, you might become a more successful circus act than a writer because the level of contortion required to shove your head that far up your ass is frankly impressive.

The Wokeness

Warner is constantly described and called “crazy” and “insane” and a “madman”, so that’s FUN. Combined with the fact that this book doesn’t seem to have any idea about what solitary does to you and effectively trivializes literal torture, this isn’t looking good, lads.

There’s also, as I mentioned, no women aside from Juliette, and everything’s always about men and how they affect her and her life and how much they matter to her.

Just. Bad. The most progressive thing about this book is the fact that a WoC wrote it, and that’s about it.

The Quotes

I’m … so sorry for this. But you have to see them.

This Kills the Lady

Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too.

I always wonder about raindrops.

I wonder about how they’re always falling down, tripping over their own feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an uncertain end. It’s like someone is emptying their pockets over the earth and doesn’t seem to care where the contents fall, doesn’t seem to care that the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when they fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their doors.

I am a raindrop.

My parents emptied their pockets of me and left me to evaporate on a concrete slab.

Wot?

I catch the rose petals as they fall from my cheeks, as they float around the frame of my body, as they cover me in something that feels like the absence of courage.

Huh?

He shifts and my eyes shatter into thousands of pieces that ricochet around the room, capturing a million snapshots, a million moments in time. Flickering images faded with age, frozen thoughts hovering precariously in dead space, a whirlwind of memories that slice through my soul.

Come Again?

Summer is like a slow-cooker bringing everything in the world to a boil 1 degree at a time. It promises a million happy adjectives only to pour stench and sewage into your nose for dinner.

The Sun is a Rat Bastard – Poem by Juliette

I hate the lackadaisical ennui of a sun too preoccupied with itself to notice the infinite hours we spend in its presence. The sun is an arrogant thing, always leaving the world behind when it tires of us.

Juliette Contemplates Cannibalism

He whispers, “How are you?” and I want to kiss every beautiful beat of his heart.

He’s Not Wrong, I Guess

It’s the only reason Adam is staying with me – because Warner thinks Adam is a cardboard cutout of vanilla regurgitations.

Get You A Man Who Can Fix Years of Abuse and 260 Days of Solitary!

He’s kissing away the pain, the hurt, the years of self-loathing, the insecurities, the dashed hopes for a future I always pictured as obsolete.

*Sarah J Maas voice*

Realization is a pendulum the size of the moon. It won’t stop slamming into me.

I … What?

He’s a hot bath, a short breath, 5 days of summer pressed into 5 fingers writing stories on my body.

Juliette is a Loony Tunes Character

My eyelashes trip into my eyebrows; my jaw drops into my lap.

Kenji Is the Worst

He grins and hobbles forward. “You know, you’re pretty hot for a psycho chick.”

I … What? part 2

My jaw is dangling from my shoelace.

The Conclusion

Don’t waste your time on this. Trust me. There’s so many things I’ve left out for the sake of brevity, and I still ended up with a mile-long review.

It doesn’t work as a romance, it doesn’t work as a dystopia, and it certainly doesn’t work as a superhero origin story. Mostly because it tries to be all of these things at once and ends up being an overwritten mediocre mess.

For a time I felt vaguely invested and interested in knowing what happened in the next books, but that feeling has passed now and I couldn’t give less of a shit.

I would honestly be very interested in seeing a character like Warner be written properly and watch him try to redeem himself and atone. But that train has already left the station, and Mafi was not on it.