Published: 2nd October 2012
By: Harper Collins
Source: Purchased copy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Shatter Me was a book that hadn't reached my radar until the wonderful reviews for Unravel Me started to flood in and I decided I needed to see what all the fuss was about.
Unfortunately, this book didn't appeal to me in the same way it did to others. First off, the writing style. I felt it was long winded, drawn out and sometimes just ridiculous. It made Juliette's inner monologue quite tedious, and hindered my building a real likeness for her character. I didn't completely dislike her either. She didn't really bring any strong emotion out in me, except for times when I wanted to shake her.
While I liked Adam, the romance was uninteresting. It just didn't excite me, no goosebumps or chills up my spine. Unfortunately, no swoonworthy moments over Adam. Warner was a lot more passionate a character than Adam.
But, Warner wasn't without fault either. While it was plain that he was an evil guy, it just didn't come through enough with Juliette. His attraction to her was immediate, there was no tension between them. He was mostly nice to her. While he made her use her touch a couple of times against her will, other than that, he was kind of sweet to her. I felt a few mean, aggressive scenes would have worked well here, (yeah, I'm a bit twisted like that lol) and slower build up to him falling all over Juliette would have made things more interesting for me.
Kenji, in my opinion, was the star of this book. A light hearted character who brought some humour to an otherwise bland read. It always surprises me how one character can completely change the dynamics of a book. But with Kenji, came some fun and banter, which up to this point, was sorely missing. And my interest in this book increased in folds once Kenji took them to his 'safe place'.
Despite my negativity about this book, I do feel there's an underlying good plot. I plan to pick up Destroy Me soon as I feel Warner's head might be an interesting place to be. And then, Unravel Me. I'm interested in seeing what other gifts people are going to have and finding out some other things that I was left wondering about. One being Adam and his brother. Maybe I can block out this dreadful writing style somehow and just get to the roots of the story.
I've had Shatter Me on my shelf for a while now and chose now to pick it up as part of a challenge I'm taking part in with the NTOFYAB group on Goodreads. If it wasn't for this, I doubt I would have finished this book as I felt it really waned in the middle and I had really little interest in reading it. I had to force myself to pick it up.
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Purchase links: The Book Depository/Amazon
