Writing posts for this series is so interesting because I’m often talking about books I haven’t thought about in a long time. Both books in today’s posts almost have an average of 4 stars on Goodreads, which sometimes makes me feel like I’m the only one that didn’t enjoy them. Please tell me I’m not alone.
Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
This book has so many mixed reviews it’s actually ridiculous. These reviews are also one extreme or the other. Either the best book someone has read or the absolute worst. I’m somewhere in the middle. I struggled through the first book and had pretty much zero opinions on what I’d read.
The formatting is so weird, which I got was to show the mental state of the character, but it was difficult to read and very disjointed. I’ve heard this does get better but I don’t want to read multiple books for a series to get better.
Synopsis: I have a curse
I have a gift
I am a monster
I’m more than human
My touch is lethal
My touch is power
I am their weapon
I will fight back
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.
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
I get the statement this book was trying to make but I don’t think it did it very well. The ‘I’m not like the other girls’ trope is too overdone, even back in 2005 when this was published. I didn’t read this until 2017, which is potentially why I found it to be outdated and overdone but still. It took me three times to finish, which I’d never attempt now. Teen me was extremely stubborn whereas now if I’m not feeling a book by chapter five I’ll DNF it.
I can’t tell you how annoyed I am that this got an adaptation recently. The only teen dystopian story that is still allowed to exist in 2025 is The Hunger Games because everyone agrees it’s great. Uglies? Not so much.
Synopsis: Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can’t wait. In just a few weeks she’ll have the operation that will turn her from a repellent ugly into a stunning pretty. And as a pretty, she’ll be catapulted into a high-tech paradise where her only job is to have fun.
But Tally’s new friend Shay isn’t sure she wants to become a pretty. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world—and it isn’t very pretty. The authorities offer Tally a choice: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. Tally’s choice will change her world forever….
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