Comment

Jan 28, 2019RebelBelle13 rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Shatter Me is a YA dystopian that many people still refer to as "the classic" of its kind. It is a cornerstone of YA tropes and cliches; the super special girl who's pretty but doesn't think she is, the love triangle, the dystopian future (typically society is taken over by a singular group which turns out to be evil), the misunderstandings, the interrupted love scenes... you get the point. With that being said, and having read many similar stories in the past, Shatter Me really doesn't rise above the rest- rather it gets lost in the ocean of like novels. There are several things here that bother me, besides its sameness- the ridiculously evil machinations of the villain, the constant narration by Juliette that gets slashed out (what's wrong with really saying what you feel, I'd like to know?), the sibling that acts like he's 5 when he's really 10 (I have a ten year old, and he doesn't speak or act like James in the least), the fact that Juliette is literally Rogue from X-Men, and the ridiculously young sounding narrator on the Audiobook version. That being said, there were some good things here. The plot moved along at a decent pace, and Mafi's descriptions of mundane things, particularly emotions, were original and engrossing. Juliette's character growth and her journey from scared, troubled mouse to confident, accepting fighter was gradual and believable. I might read the next- it depends on if I'm in the mood for a YA dystopian full of cliches or not.