The Rest of "Me": Redemption

Okay, so you might remember that one time at the beginning of last month when I shared with you my *ahem* less than positive reaction to the opening book in Tahereh Mafi's Shatter Me series, in which I was comically rageful about how disappointing it was...until it wasn't.  Despite my distaste for a large percentage of the book, I found myself oddly engaged by the book's ending.  Ergo, instead of chalking up this series to a severe departure of my tastes from those of the masses who appear to have loved it and abandoning it after the first book without looking back, I plowed on into the second book, Unravel Me.


I don't usually bother myself with commenting on whole series of books because I figure I'm bound to accidentally spoil something and draw the ire of the spoiler-haters everywhere, not to mention who really wants to read reviews of books that are second and third in a series when you haven't read the first?  (This is usually the case with myself reading reviews.)  On this occasion, however, I figure that since I, a little too gleefully perhaps, gave the first book a public shaming, I should come forth having finished the series and confess that I, um, actually ended up really liking the rest of the series quite a lot.

(BTW, I'm not going to dish out summaries and spoil Unravel Me and Ignite Me, but I'm not guaranteeing this to be spoiler free when it comes to Shatter Me.  You've been warned.)

Anyhow, Mafi's outrageous hyperbole that aggravated me so much throughout Shatter Me is still present, but it's muted beneath the action of the plot and the development of main characters who I, at last, began to like.

I mean, there's still stuff like this little nugget that made me giggle at a tense moment when you're probably not supposed to be giggling -

"...and I feel my face flush so fast that for a moment I'm surprised I'm not standing in a toilet." 

But then, there's also this one which I actually thought was clever...

"The silence between us has slaughtered a thousand innocent seconds and when he finally speaks his voice is barely audible, raw with disbelief."

And then there's the end of this anecdote, which is hyperbole free, which so impressed me with how it cut right to heart of a major character (which is kind of a veiled spoiler if you happen to be familiar with the major characters, you could probably....guess)...

"And then she took it off, slipped it on my index finger, and said, 'If you hide your heart, he will never be able to take it from you.'"

(Spoilery?  See, I hate this.)

I also whined about main character Juliette's foolish wimpy-ness, and I'm happy to report that since she started out so foolish, wimpy, and generally insipid, she has plenty of room to grow in the latter two books and she does.  In fact, her transformation turns into the cornerstone of the book, even overshadowing the romance angle (at times).  Watching Juliette discover both her physical and emotional strength is definitely one of the highlights of the final book.  

(Not so spoilery...)

Anyhow, the bottom line, before I wander (too far) into spoiler territory, is that this series worked just like you hope a good series will.  It might have started off kind of, well, lame, but it got better and better.  I loved the romance I wasn't expecting.  All the characters I felt conflicted about in the first book, most especially Juliette herself, grow and change and transform into the characters I hoped they could be, strong and vulnerable in equal measure, but ultimately courageous enough to face their dystopian world head on.  Admittedly, the first book takes a little extra tenacity on the part of the reader, but, in my opinion, the second two books definitely make it worth the effort.

(Between the two of us, my mom and I bought these, all of them!  Ergo, no disclaimer!)

Shatter Me: A Rant With a Surprise Ending

Okay, so December, right?  December, for me and a lot of people I imagine, is not a month rife with excess reading time, ergo, I usually opt for Christmas season YA.  You know, something a little quicker and easier to read to squeeze in among the holiday madness.  This year I decided to start a series that everybody seems to have loved, a dystopian that sounded right up my alley - Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi.  This kind of backfired because, um, I hated this book, that is, until I stopped hating it so much.  If I had spent as much time reading this book as I did contemplating whether or not to finish it, I would have been done twice as fast.  Anyhow, I did actually finish despite my many reservations, so what follows is, in honor of the book, probably the most inarticulate, snarky commentary ever to show its face on my blog.    

Shatter Me is the story of girl, imprisoned in an asylum by the authorities in a dying world, unloved, unappreciated, untouched because, oh right, her touch is lethal.  She lives in darkness, eats formless gruel for every meal, and spends her endless minutes in her cell keeping a journal of her woes filled with the kind of overwrought nonsensical angst that should stay safely locked up in her head.  Then, a second prisoner shows up in her cell and everything changes.  Suddenly, instead of being shunned, Juliette is practically being worshiped by The Reestablishment that seeks to use her as a weapon as they attempt to remake the world and undo the mistakes of the past that wrecked the planet.  I would be more specific, but that's pretty much all the world-building readers are privy to in the early stages of Shatter Me.

So, Shatter Me has a pretty good premise, but oh, oh the execution.  First of all, why are all the YA haters out there so busy (still) whining about Twilight and failing to warn unsuspecting readers about the writing in this book?  I'm just going to lay it all out on the table here, and say that some of the writing in the early stages of Shatter Me is just beyond cringeworthy.  Sure, there's the device that the book takes the form of Juliette's journal, and she tends to cross out a lot of things and revise her thoughts.  That actually didn't bother me at all like it seemed to bother a random smattering of readers.  Rather, I wished that Mafi would have elected to strike through more sentences and spare me this continuous overabundance of overwrought hyperbole that often actually jolted me out of the narrative to either laugh, read it aloud to some poor innocent wandering through my field of vision, or pick up one of my eyeballs after it unceremoniously rolled out of my head.  But wait, how about I'll just show you?

Here's a quick sample of the sort of writing that makes readers like me go, "Wha??"

My heart is a water balloon exploding in my chest.  My lungs are swinging from my rib cage.  I feel as though every fist in the world has decided to punch me in the stomach.

Her heart is a water balloon.  Her lungs are, ouch, swinging from her rib cage.  Gross.  And fists!  Fists are personified and have better decision-making skills than I do.  Wait, I have another!  This one's my favorite, and I now occasionally bleat this at unsuspecting bystanders for my own amusement.

I'd like to cry into his eyes.

You what?  You want to cry into his eyes?  What does that even mean?

Okay, so maybe you're the sort of reader who can overlook the rampant hyperbole, but then you run into the problem of Juliette.  She's a sympathetic character, without a doubt.  I mean, she's a nice girl with a surprisingly fantastic moral compass whose parents essentially decided she was a monster and gave her to the government to do what they will with her.  When she wants to help people, she kills them.  Human companionship is not really available to a girl whose touch is dangerous.  She cares about strangers and loathes herself and the curse that she lives with every day.  However, throughout the course of the book, she reveals herself to be irritatingly reckless, her mouth just goes and goes when it should stay shut.  Her ramblings definitely fail to reveal even the slightest hint of the brave or thoughtful heroine you hope to materialize in a bleak dystopian world.  Indeed, she can't shut up long enough to make sensible decisions about who to trust.  Sure, she's sympathetic, but for someone whose touch can kill she's also a serious wimp.

Now for the surprise ending.  Finally at about the two-thirds mark, Shatter Me takes a turn for the better.  The action picks up and gets Juliette out of her own twisted head for a while to this reader's great relief.  Bravery and strength start to work their way into her character at the last possible moment, and it becomes apparent that she's only just scratched the surface of her power.  Then the book wraps up with a tantalizing plot twist and...well.  Then I, with just the barest hint of shame and self-loathing, pick up the second book in the series hoping against hope that this series will turn out the opposite of Divergent and wow me with the end instead of the beginning.

(No disclaimer, I bought this!)