Reviews with content warning for Sexual harassment - Shatter Me

Read at 16, rated 5 stars, re-read at 18, rated 3.75 stars. The story doesn’t flow as well as I remembered, and the romance feels somewhat forced, but the book is still fun to read and beautifully written.

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hinata_boke's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

2.0

The concept of the book is pretty interesting, but a lot of the neat dystopian aspects are clouded by the romance subplots.
Too much flowery language and weird editing made it a bit annoying to read - though I'm willing to accept that as intentional if it's written as Juliette's stream of consciousness.
This is first-person narrated, which is not my cup of tea.

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icarusandthesun's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.0

this book was so badly written that it was actually quite funny. it made me physically cringe more times than i can count (for lines such as "you are a very bad girl, juliette" shudder) which is terrible, but also better than feeling completely indifferent to a book in my opinion.

the middle part

Spoiler

where they escaped and crashed at adam's for a while

was horrendously boring. people got shot and hurt here and there and yet i didn't care about any of it. if you take a look at the trigger warnings, you'll see lots of death and murder and blood but just know that every brutal thing that happened felt anticlimactic and shallow.

i was also not a fan of the whole "she's the only girl among hundreds of touch-starved men and forced to wear skimpy clothing" trope that basically carried the whole first half of the book. it was silly how obsessed everyone seemed to be with her, and how "hot" everyone thought she was even though she was literally rotting in a cell for more than 250 days with only one meal a day and nearly no means to hygiene. who are you kidding?

i also didn't buy the romance at all.

Spoiler

adam and her never said a word to each other during their school days together, but they were still secretely in love with each other? because adam was the only one who looked at her like she was an ACTUAL HUMAN BEING?? (woah, and they say romance is dead🥴🤭)
and he fell in love with her because she was, uh, nice? because she gave up her seat to some girl on the bus? man, those two really are a low ass bar.

and you know a book is bad when the mysogynist side-character is the funniest guy in the book...

the action sequences were absolute bullshit, too. not them literally dodging bullets LMAO and "our movements made it hard for them to aim at us". girl what-
you're a slow ahh human being and not the flash, what are you on about...
if i were warner i'd fire all of the soldiers because a 15-year-old who's played ONE round of cod or valorant would be better at shooting than those nerds.

so yeah, needless to say, 80% of this book was teenage girl fantasy nonsense. i didn't hate the ending though. the whole concept—the worldbuilding—has potential. i'm just sad this potential didn't reveal itself until the very end. but i've heard people say the sequels are better, so maybe......

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web_h3ad's review against another edition

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slow-paced

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

0.25

this book reads as a horror book to me & the fact that is marketed as a romance is incredibly alarming. juliette is the only female character with a name & has no autonomy for the entire story. at no point does she make any choice for herself, & instead of condemning this, the story seems to encourage her lack of agency. the two love interests are controlling and regularly put their hands on her despite her telling them not to. most of the scenes i assume are meant to be romantic are actually just sexual assault. despite her repeated demand that they do not touch her, both men ignore this hard boundary & grope her at every opportunity. horrifyingly, juliette is portrayed as secretly wanting this touch & just not knowing it, a rhetoric often employed by real life predators. it was incredibly difficult to get through scenes where both men forced her into situations she was very vocally uncomfortable in. at one point, warner is literally ripping her clothes off of her. her choices in love interests are a predator & a stalker. juliette is regularly dressed in revealing clothing & harassed by even the minor male characters, even when she asks them not to.

sexual assault aside, the book also is just poorly written. it’s gimmicky & full of pointless metaphors that add nothing to the story but more words on the page. the twists are predictable, the plot is slow, & i swear to god if i have to read about adams blue eyes one more time i will actually lose my mind. i would not recommend this book to anyone.

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foxo_cube's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

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

3.25

I feel kind of unsure how to rate this. Essentially, the story itself didn't do much for me, but I found it really compelling - I wanted to keep reading it and I was a bit disappointed to come to the end.

I love the writing style. I think it does very well at bringing the reader into the chaos and intensity of Juliette's mind as a traumatised, terrified teenager, and the writing becomes more or less frantic with her emotions. Oddly, there is a note at the start of the book explaining this narrative technique, which I can't blame the writer for because it's just as, if not more, likely to have been the publisher's idea. Bit of a shame, though - like explaining the punchline to a joke. Nonetheless, I think that's what drew me in to the narrative: the way that Juliette's feelings are expressed is lovely and makes her feel more human.

The romance with Adam was okay. I think it's a bit weird that he found out he could touch her unharmed because he was caressing her in her sleep when she was having nightmares, but his feelings for her come off as sincere. I think she genuinely loves him but sometimes I couldn't help but think that surely, affection from nearly anyone will feel amazing and that could make her think she's in love even if she isn't. I mean, you only have to look at her weirdly conflicting emotions towards War Criminal Warner to see that.

Ah, yes, War Criminal Warner. He's a pervert and a pathetic nepotism baby and likes to kill people for fun. He turns up to be emotionally abusive and sexually inappropriate towards Juliette, intending on grooming her into his weapon/consort. She inexplicably still thinks he's hot. Sometimes, it feels like this book is resisting the urge to become Baby's First Dark Romance and go down his route.

Spoiler

Towards the end, when she and Adam have escaped and later get caught, Warner has found out he can also touch her without being hurt, and so starts being even more handsy than usual. She spots a gun in his inside coat pocket and decides to go with it despite her discomfort just long enough to get the gun and shoot him, which is a bit of a girlboss move. So he's making out with her and picking her up by the arse and all this and she starts off being "ew yucky nasty Warner, this isn't my One and Only True Love Adam" and then thinks "...actually, I'm kinda into this". What??? I know that sort of thing is a trope in dark romance as a genre, but that is one of the reasons I do not read dark romance. The whole "this is sexual assault but actually I like it" thing is just gross to me. If you're into it as a fantasy and within the constrains of fiction, I can't stop you, but it's not my cup of tea at all.

Although I see how Adam can be viewed as a bit bland (he is), Warner is, like, bland with a bit of black pepper. I have a soft spot for pathetic men and for crazy sadistic characters, albeit typically not in romance, but he's just not very sexy about it. He's just a bit sad, to me. I don't care if his eyes are light green or whatever.

Juliette is incredibly horny in general. It's kind of funny sometimes. She'll experience the most traumatising shit you can think of and then Adam will touch her arms and she'll be like "oh YEAH babey". To be fair, though, she is the most touch-starved person of all time, so maybe that's not that weird.

This isn't a criticism, but a thing I noticed that I found strange. So, Juliette has been given maybe one small meal a day for the best part of a year, and presumably must be terribly underweight and look like she's on death's door. Even after eating normally for a couple of weeks, she's probably not looking exactly healthy. That's whatever in itself, that's just the nature of being imprisoned in an inhumane asylum. But there're consistent reminders of how tiny and little and small Juliette is that... well, it kind of gave me the ick. Look, I've got a height complex three times my size, so I'm not a fan of big height differences personally. I don't want to feel even shorter than I am. But with the context meaning she's probably very very skinny and frail as well, it made me a bit uncomfy. I don't know if this is just a straight woman thing that I don't get, a romance trope that I wouldn't have come across, or if the writer has a mild macro/micro kink that's coming through or what, which is why, even if I didn't like it, I don't mean it as critique. It just stood out to me.

The ending left more questions than answers because it's part of a series. That's fair.

Spoiler

Still, I like that she found a community with other people with powers similar to hers. I think that's cool.

I don't know if I'll read the other books, though. I'm kind of happy imagining that she lived safe and happily with Adam and it's all okay now, but then it was a fun book to read even if my review probably comes across as miserable so hey, we'll see!

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xena42's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

3.5

Fast-paced and exciting. I kind of don't want to get sucked into the entire long series... but I *am* curious about what happens next, so we'll see.
The narration style would have been grating but I hadn't read anything written that way in a long time, so instead of being annoying it helped place me into the character's perspective, as it was meant to.

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