Book Review: Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1)

Shatter Me (Shatter Me, #1): Tahereh Mafi 

I have a curse
I have a gift

I am a monster
I'm more than human

My touch is lethal
My touch is power

I am their weapon
I will fight back

No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon. But Juliette has plans of her own. After a lifetime without freedom, she's finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time—and to find a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever.

I've heard this book compared to some pretty popular book series like Divergent and The Darkest Minds. I also heard this book had one of the best relationships in a book series. I see so many people with "Team Warner" badges on their blog so suffice to say I was more than ready to find out what all this Warner business was about. Unfortunately, I didn't like it as much I was hoping I would. The characterization mimicked X-Men and I think that is what disappointed me most. 

Juliet is the main character and she is the only female character in the majority of the book. Can you imagine that? The only female character? I was pretty surprised myself. There is very little diversity in this book unless you can take into account Juliet's "powers". The two good things I liked about this book was how fast moving it was and the poetic writing style. It was by no means a hard read, so you can probably breeze through it in a day or two! 

"All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart"

The romance between Juliet and Adam was soooo sappy. I didn't like Adam. He was overbearing and creepy. How can people love Warner so much when Adam was hovering like a hawk over every other page? There was no relationship between Juliet and Warner so that must come in sometime in the next two books. If you haven't read the X-Men comics or watched the movies, well that's what all my gifs were in this review because I thought it was very fitting. The majority of my problems with the book happened when I made the connection between this book and X-Men. I'm not talking like "oh this kind of reminds me of the X-Men", I'm talking as soon as I realized it everything about this book reminded me of X-Men. If you don't know who X-Men are, they basically are heroic mutants who are feared because they're different and they really just want to fit in. And they can do so at Professor Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, where Professor X trains young mutants. In Shatter Me, Juliet is also feared and hated because she's different and at the end Adam even says to her "You look like a superhero." oh ok. At this point, I just feel like this is a retelling of X-Men with the absence of my favorite X-Men like Magneto, Rogue, Jean Gray, and Cyclops. Even though she is kind of like Rogue, I guess in a way. 

"Girls are always talking about electricity in their romance, but none

 are too happy to actually be electrocuted, apparently. Blood confusing, is what it is."

I was really anticipating this book, but when I made the connection to X-Men I was pretty put off by it. I have the rest of the books already because I purchased them from a Book Outlet sale, so I think I will still read them. I hope in the future books that I will be able to segregate a lot more between the book and the comics. It was an easy read, so if you have not read or watched X-Men I don't see any reason why you wouldn't love it! If you have watched or read X-Men and read this book I would love to know your opinion about the connection. 

- Jocelyn