Title: Shatter Me (Shatter Me #1)

Author: Tahereh Mafi

Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction

Published: November 15, 2011

While Juliette was locked up because her touch was fatal the world fell apart. The Reestablishment was supposedly the answer to all the worlds problems.

I started reading this book without reading the synopsis. I wasn't wild about the look of the cover, but it kept coming up on recommended lists because of other books I had read. When I saw it at the library I just added it to my pile. I really had no expectations going in. I think that might have helped.

The first hundred or so pages really appealed to me. I thought the internal question of sanity Juliette kept asking herself was interesting. The fact that she had spent most of a year in isolation and had only herself to converse with, would have made the issue of insanity a very real possibility. Then she got a roommate. Her reactions to him both internal and external were interesting along with his reactions to her.

Then there was a shift of location, which lead to a shift of focus for the story. It wasn't nearly as interesting.

The author built a world and made it possible. Then a character came along and said it was all a lie. Then another character came along and said the first character was wrong and the world was how Juliette believed it to be. The plot would see-saw back and forth. There was no real explanation why Juliette would trust one character or distrust another. Her trust in the person seemed random and felt as if it correlated with whatever emotion she was having at that point in the book.

I gave the first of the book 5 stars. I gave the rest of the book between 2 or 3 stars. Overall I think I am going to give the entire book 3 stars.