This article contains spoilers for the entire “Shatter Me” series.
The “Shatter Me” series is a young adult book series written by Tahereh Mafi that contains six books and five novellas.
The series follows a 17-year-old girl named Juliette Ferrars who has a supernatural ability that makes her touch lethal, and she is detained in an asylum at the start of the series due to an incident with her ability involving a little boy.
Additionally, the world has been taken over by an organization called the Reestablishment, which controls the resources and people of the entire world. However, there are several rebel organizations that threaten the Reestablishment. This has led the Reestablishment to attempt to turn Juliette into its ultimate weapon.
The one the Reestablishment has put in charge is Aaron Warner. Warner is known as being cold, cruel and the son of the leader or supreme commander of the North American continent.
The first three books in the series are great. They set up the world and characters in a way that is interesting and easy to understand. Not only that, the first trilogy makes this series an addictive read that is hard to put down.
From introducing characters like Kenji, who is a rebel with the ability to turn invisible, to the romance that grows between Aaron and Juliette, the first three books are incredibly compelling.
However, some parts of the last half of the series don’t reach the standards the first three books set.
“Restore Me” is the fourth book in the series, and it was good. Juliette takes over as the supreme commander of the North American continent. This book highlights Aaron’s absolute faith in Juliette’s abilities even when she doesn’t see it herself.
However, this book has parts that are quite annoying. For example, it is revealed that Warner is hiding the fact Juliette is adopted and that he unknowingly tortured her sister years ago after he was ordered to by his father.
Warner was unaware that he tortured Juliette’s biological sister until recently. Since he believed that her birth parents were dead, he thought there was no point in telling her, but Juliette broke up with him as soon as she found out.
Her breaking up with Warner wasn’t the irritating part. The annoying part was that Juliette was more annoyed that she wasn’t told she was adopted rather than the fact that Warner tortured her sister. So many other books have similar things like this that happen.
At this point, the trope feels overused and simply a device to create conflict between book couples that get together early in a series. Nevertheless, the breakup made their reunion later in the series that much sweeter.
The next book in the series is “Defy Me,” which is the best book in the series. “Defy Me” simply has some of the best scenes and it feels like it has the quickest pace of all the books.
For example, when Warner proposes to Juliette, it is adorable because he truly wanted to do it right with a ring and everything, but he couldn’t wait any longer. He simply asked and she said yes.
Overall, this book is filled with just so many great scenes.
The last book in the series is “Imagine Me.” The expectations for this book were so high, but it wasn’t able to live up to it because of one main reason.
In this book Juliette had her memories erased again, which wasn’t bothersome when it happened previously. However, this time when she didn’t have her memories, Juliette ended up developing feelings for Warner’s abusive father.
That detail ruins the entire book because it feels so uncomfortable and unnecessary to the plot as a whole. It could be seen as proof of her unwavering devotion to the Reestablishment, but that could have been shown in other ways.
This book does still have great attributes, but they get a bit overshadowed by the bad parts of it.
Overall, the series is still a great read, but I wish some things were done differently.
