Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Shatter Me

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

57 reviews

kim_gzt's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I didn’t know what to expect but I really fell in love with the unconventional writing style and Juliettes character! This dystopian story was darker than expected but I enjoyed reading it nevertheless.

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dexlud's review against another edition

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I really did try to read this but I just couldn’t. I really struggled to get through this even though it read super quickly. The YA aspect is definitely why I dislike it as i’m not a YA enjoyer, let alone a fantasy enjoyer. This is a classic instance of me picking up a book I wouldn’t like, just because everyone I know enjoys it. I will still be keeping my fairyloot shatter me bookmarks just because they are gorgeous haha.

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thelaurajay's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

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xabbeylongx's review against another edition

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hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Book Review:

So, this book I started a couple of years ago, and I just couldn’t get into it. I think I got to chapter three, and I put it down because I thought this book was not for me. Oh how wrong I was.

For starters, I actually now adore the layout of this book. The words that have a line through it, indicating her real thoughts VS the ones she allows herself to think/say is gorgeous. When I first read it, I wasn’t a fan of the repetition and the lack of structure the sentences in this book has, being a Creative Writing student, but I see now that it actually adds to the story. It makes it faster and more urgent when she’s panicking, or when she’s excited and has a lot of thoughts in her mind… I think it’s absolutely perfect!

I like the fact there’s only one point of view in this story, and I actually really like Juliett. She’s flawed, but she also knows it, and she’s humble. She sticks to her morals, even when people try to derail them. You can tell that she’s a character that truly cares about others, even if they don’t about her. And Adam is just the same, I really like his character. Warner is just grim, but that makes it so much better, because I truly hate his character.

With the world-building, I think it’s done really well. The pacing is good, and we’re not force fed information at the start of the novel, we are gradually fed it throughout, which is actually quite difficult to do and not often done very well, so Mafi did a great job with that. The plot itself was a little bit too-perfect for me: Warner allowed Adam to be so close because he knew her from school, and then he got rid of the cameras in her room, and they could just escape without getting into trouble, you get my point. Plus, although the action built up in the end, if we think about what happens in the book, they’re just escaping from one place to the next, unable to really stay anywhere. It works for the first book, but if they spend the rest of the series just flitting from one place to another, then it might get a bit tedious after a while.

And why did it take so long for Warner to start experimenting her with other people? There’s something that’s not quite clicking in regards to that. However, that’s my only nitpick of this novel. Other than that, it’s safe to say I’m really excited to read the next instalment in the series.

Book Summary:

We follow Juliett as she’s being kept prisoner in a cell. She hasn’t spoken to anyone in almost a year. They barely feed her more than one meal a day, and she has always been by herself. That is, until, she is given a cellmate.

Adam, his name is. He doesn’t know why she is in there, or why he is there, but he tries to befriend her. She likes him, but can’t get too close to him (physically as well as emotionally) because she has a special power: nobody can touch her. If they do, they’ll be in extreme pain whilst she feeds off it (not voluntarily, of course) and if they touch her too long, they die. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and has been bullied and ignored her whole life. The only person who ever stood up for her (because not even her own parents did) was Adam.

Yes, it is indeed the same Adam that is in her cell. She remembers him, but he doesn’t act like he remembers her.

She wakes up one day, after a nightmare, and her and Adam are being held by guards. When she wakes up, as she must have fallen unconscious, she finds that Adam double-crossed her. He is working with Warner, the man in charge, who is a little obsessed with her. He’s only 19, but he plans to use her as a weapon.

The Reestablishment - the people in charge - are planning to eradicate every part of culture in the world, religion, languages, historics, and have everything the way they want it. Warner is helping that, getting rid of people who are less valuable, like the old, and the sick. He wants to use Juliett to do it. She resists, but he’s very powerful.

She finds out that Adam is actually double-crossing Warner, and he’s been in love with Juliett this whole time. He is the only one that can touch her, and he’s always admired her from afar for her kindness. When Warner is trying to touch her, Adam jumps in and threatens Warner, who gets surprisingly scared. They manage to escape, but Warner just about touches Juliett without getting hurt himself. She tries to ignore it, but now there’s two people that can touch her without getting hurt.

Adam takes her to his house, and they meet his brother, James. They are only there for a night before Kenji, someone Adam used to know, runs in, and their place is given away, Warner has found them. Adam gets shot, but Juliett shoots Warner, and they manage to escape.

Turns out, Kenji is double-crossing them as well. This was all planned, and he takes them to somewhere, which is actually considered a safe place. The medics tend to Adam, who turns out okay, James is well looked after, and they are safe from Warner, for the moment. There are also 56 other people like her, people with powers.

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sylviixoxo's review against another edition

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4.75

Great book for teens who want to get into reading.

Romance was a little too fast paced for my liking, but it worked well in allowing a softer side of the characters to shine in this dark and dingy world.

FMC got borderline sexually assaulted tho. Js a warning for people like me who are sensitive to those things. (I skipped that section and there’s nothing wrong with you skipping that part too!)

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mfh413's review against another edition

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dark sad medium-paced

1.5

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overduck's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Middle school me was obsessed with this book. Adult me skimmed a significant amount of it (Juliette is quite the over-narrator), but was not disappointed by the Warner content. In my opinion, while not a bad book, this is one you have to get through so you can get to the ones later on.

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laleh_eve's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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yzer2468's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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lolajh's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I’m so confused on who the target audience is for this???? There’s scenes like

Warner making Juliette torture that baby

but then it’s written so much like a child 😭😭 The writing is seriously so underdeveloped and irritating, like with the weird repetition of words with no commas like “I want to be angry angry angry” or similes and metaphors that make no sense (not to mention the sheer amount of times the word shatter was mentioned dude) and it all took away from an admittedly promising premise of a story but just with poor execution. Like the concept of this 1984-esque dystopian world and Juliette

among many others

having this dangerous condition and a traumatic upbringing and her whole experience in the asylum was all very promising, like I loved the beginning of this book. I really just think the romance ruined it a bit. I feel like the book would have really benefited from the delving into and working on of Juliette’s trauma and that she recovered her sense of self independently from others before diving into romance. It was just very strange to me to have these raw and emotional scenes with Juliette and Adam and then

having near-sex scenes in a fucking tank or in the very next room to Adam’s ten year old brother???? I especially found that shower scene so incredibly strange because of how quick it escalated from Juliette baring so much emotion and trauma to then Adam picking her up and putting her in the shower and then kissing her?? Like I do think Adam all in all is an ‘okay’ guy, apart from him ignoring Juliette’s consent to not touch her several times but most of their romance scenes were just so off putting in context.

And let’s talk about fucking Warner. I’ve read the descriptions of later books in the series and have seen him alllllll over tiktok so I know how things with him end up going, but right now he is anything but redeemable in my eyes. He’s psychotic and creepy, and his advances towards Juliette are nothing but rape-y.

Juliette accepting his advances before shooting him was assault. She didn’t have any choice at all; it was either let Warner…do that, or she would die. And I fucking hate that in that scene, Juliette starts to enjoy it, that she hadn’t, what, realised that she wanted it? That’s a dangerous thing to portray for sure, because that’s how rapists think! In my eyes, there is so way in hell their relationship can develop to be something where they can end up together in a healthy manner. I don’t care if he’s traumatised or has the ability to “change”, there is no coming back from that. He’s scary and I probably will be dropping this series because I cannot even handle that happening.

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