Book Nerds Across America

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. (From Goodreads)

This is a book I've been looking forward to reading for awhile. First, it got a lot of pre-release hype in the blogger community. I started following Tahereh on Twitter and she is just such a gem. Then, I fell in love with the cover when it was released. My plan was read Shatter Me as soon as it was released in November! But, as all BookNerds and book lovers know, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." Then I found out that Tahereh might be coming down to my area in April for a book signing, and Shatter Me climbed its way back up to the top of my TBR list.

The style of this book definitely threw me in the beginning. Tahereh has the challenge of writing from the point of view of a character who has been in solitary confinement for almost a year. 264 days to be exact. And no matter how sane you are going on, you will start to go a little looney tunes after being locked by yourself in a room with no one to talk to for such a long time. So in order to show the conflicts going on in Juliette (the main character's) mind, Tahereh wrote some of her thoughts -- the deep down thoughts that Juliette thought but wouldn't really want to admit -- with strike-through text. I don't know if I really liked it after awhile. It was unique. The stream-of-consciousness style did not flow well to me as reader. It didn't give the story forward motion and make me want to keep reading. She did a good job of illustrating Juliette's mindset. I put the book down, almost stopped reading it, and ended up just skimming a lot of it until the action picked up. This beginning made the change in Juliette when she is finally able to be touched and to touch that much more intense.

Speaking of intense....these Juliette and Adam scenes?! WHOA. Juliette has never touched anyone or let anyone touch her in years. And now this hot, sexy man is touching her in all kinds of PG-13 ways. (Lol! I could not think of a way to write that phrase without it sounding wrong.) Tahereh does such a great job describing how it feels to Juliette...I mean, think about just how nice a simple embrace is. Now think about how nice a deep kiss from someone you love is. Now imagine never having felt anything like that before and suddenly it's all there and WHOA!!! For this reason, the scenes with Adam and Juliette were, hands-down, my favorite and what made the book for me.

~Flo~