Review: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi.

Published November 15, 2011.
Published by HarperCollins.
Source: Won from Drey at Drey's Library. Thank you!

Goodreads Summary:
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 Review:
I don't think I'm going to be able to get through this review without some fangirling and some gushing. I'm sorry. I try to mostly be fairly professional in most of my reviews, but this one might have to be an exception. There are too many feelings.

Where to start, where to start...
I suppose I'll start with the writing, seeing as that's what caught my attention first. I absolutely LOVE Tahereh's writing style! It's very stream-of-consciousness, with thoughts crossed out, as if Juliette is writing it all down in her notebook. It was so different and so effective in expressing what Juliette's brain is like. On top of the stream-of-consciousness style, Tahereh is just an incredible author. I mean, in the second chapter she wrote a paragraph about raindrops (*raindrops!*) that blew me away. Never has a description of something that mundane caught me that way. Completely impressed.

Juliette is such an incredible character. She is so real. She has been hurt so many times in her life and has lived in constant fear and shame of what she can do. A character like this can be hard to write because she would not think the same way as a normal human being. Tahereh never slips up with her. It is so easy to believe everything Juliette thinks. I mean, even when she describes Adam's gorgeous blue eyes, she compares the colour of them to a bruise, not to anything cheesy or pretty that a typical young girl likely would. I get so immersed in her character, and I love her. I love her determination and her strength. How she never loses her humanity, even when she doesn't believe she has any left. She is so much more and so much stronger than she thinks she is, possibly because she doesn't think she has much to lose.

I also have crazy strong feelings for the two male leads, Adam and Warner. Adam might be the sweetest guy ever, even if a bit unrealistic (but hey, a girl can dream, right?). I loved him, I loved his love and protective quality for the people who mean the most to him, and I loved his determination. And where Adam is protective, Warner is obsessive. He is... infuriating. Infuriating! So controlling and power-crazed, and full of himself. His head is so swollen because he's been allowed to take control and it makes me crazy! The strong emotions going both ways really helped me get totally involved in the story. Because I loved and hated the characters, I cared with so much passion. I made ridiculous faces and almost yelled and smiled the biggest smile.

This was a fantastic, intense, crazy novel and I must read the sequel, NOW!
I cannot justify anything less than 5 stars!