Book #7: Shatter Me

Title: Shatter Me

Author: Tahereh Mafi

Date started reading: Jan. 16, 2012
Date finished reading: Jan. 19, 2912

Publish date: Nov. 2011
ISBN: 978-0062085481
Number of pages: 352

Official 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." (http://www.taherehmafi.com/)

Official book "trailer:"



How I obtained the book: Got a free copy through my employer (a newspaper)

Memorable quotes:

• "I’ve been locked up for 264 days. I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company. 1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet I haven’t spoken in 264 days of isolation. 6,336 hours since I’ve touched another human being." 
• "Sometimes I think the loneliness inside of me is going to explode through my skin and sometimes I'm not sure if crying or screaming or laughing through the hysteria will solve anything at all. ... I've been screaming for years and no one has ever heard me."
• "Blackness buries me in its folds."
• "These words are vomit. This shaky pen is my esophagus. This sheet of paper is my porcelain bowl."
• "Sometimes I wish I never had to sleep. Sometimes I think that if I stay very, very still, if I never move at all, things will change. I think if I freeze myself I can freeze the pain. ... If time stands still nothing can go wrong." 
• "I close my eyes until I've sewn them shut."
• "We were killing ourselves by trying to stay alive."
• "My life is 4 walls of missed opportunities poured into concrete molds." 
• "I'd really like to exhale for the first time in my life." 
• "Truth is a jealous, vicious mistress that never ever sleeps."
• :"Hope in this world bleeds out of the barrel of a gun."
• "My eyes are 2 windows cracked open by the chaos in this world." 
• "My body is a carnivorous flower, a poisonous houseplant, a loaded gun with a million triggers."
• "He's more wrong than an upside-down rainbow. But everything he said is right."
• "I'm an encyclopedia with too many blank pages."

My commentary:

• Obviously the cover of "Shatter Me" is absolutely beautiful and is what drew me to it in the first place. I've seen on several websites that it's been called one of the top 10 most beautiful book covers of 2011. I'd have to agree. (Of course, my absolute favorite cover of 2011 was for "The Demon Lover" by Juliet Dark, but with that book, I learned that you definitely can't judge a book by it's cover. No matter how much I loved the cover, the book was not what I had hoped for. I'll have to share my feelings about that book in a future post whenever I get around to it)
• I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at the "About me" part of a book. According to this book ... "When unable to find a book, she (author Tahereh Mafi) can be found reading candy wrappers, coupons, and old receipts." ... Sounds like my kind of person
• The author does an amazing job at describing Juliette's loneliness and utter lack of hope. Reading the first few chapters made me want to cry for her pain and hopelessness. Even though this is a completely fictional type of world, the book totally speaks to the lonely/depressed little girl deep in my heart and touches the parts of me that still hurts from my lonely childhood. 
• The world created in this book is so devastating. Very few animals, very few plants, utter destruction everywhere. The Reestablishment group is trying to create a new society which basically does away with all culture and languages other than English. It's just so sad to think about
• The ending was not what I expected ... it was way better than what I expected. It ends in a complex cliffhanger, but there is enough closure of the stories that I'm not left feeling disappointed that the story stopped where it did. The book was so sad at first, but it turns into one of the best paranomal romance stories that I've ever read
• The book is told through Juliette's point of view, and it's almost a stream of consciousness type of writing. It's really easy to get sucked into the story, and seeing the world's devastation through her eyes is nice. Another thing that adds to the author's style of writing is that some of Juliette's thoughts are thought, struck through with a strike-out font, and rephrased. It's very interesting. It reminds me of how my teenage diaries looked. (you can see an example of what I mean below)

Buy on Amazon.com: Shatter Me