Genre: Young Adult (Paranormal Romance/Dystopian)
Date Published: April 2, 2019
Publisher: HarperTeen
The gripping fifth installment in the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling Shatter Me series. Will Juliette’s broken heart make her vulnerable to the strengthening darkness within her?
Juliette’s short tenure as the supreme commander of North America has been an utter disaster. When the children of the other world leaders show up on her doorstep, she wants nothing more than to turn to Warner for support and guidance. But he shatters her heart when he reveals that he’s been keeping secrets about her family and her identity from her—secrets that change everything.
Juliette is devastated, and the darkness that’s always dwelled within her threatens to consume her. An explosive encounter with unexpected visitors might be enough to push her over the edge.
This is the fifth book in the Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi. After the way the last book ended, I really needed Juliet's present day perspective sooner than I got it. We got her past perspectives. We got Warner's past perspectives. We got a lot from Kenji in the present, and then finally we got present day Juliet. This book gave us a lot of history, which is good, I suppose. So, much was going on with Warner, Juliet, and Emme that we had no clue about during the first three books, but I dunno, I'm still not sold on it. I liked it ending as a trilogy. Sometimes less is more, you know? That original trilogy was amazing. We didn't need more. This book? It almost felt forced in places. It worries me. I really hope the next book leaves us with a satisfying overall ending.
Kenji
She’s screaming.
She’s just screaming words, I think. They’re just words. But she’s screaming, screaming at the top of her lungs, with an agony that seems almost an exaggeration, and it’s causing devastation I never knew possible. It’s like she just—imploded.
It doesn’t seem real.
I mean, I knew Juliette was strong—and I knew we hadn’t discovered the depth of her powers—but I never imagined she’d be capable of this.
Of this:
The ceiling is splitting open. Seismic currents are thundering up the walls, across the floors, chattering my teeth. The ground is rumbling under my feet. People are frozen in place even as they shake, the room vibrating around them. The chandeliers swing too fast and the lights flicker ominously. And then, with one last vibration, three of the massive chandeliers rip free from the ceiling and shatter as they hit the floor.
Crystal flies everywhere. The room loses half its light, bathing the cavernous space in a freakish glow, and it’s suddenly hard to see what’s happening. I look at Juliette and see her staring, slack-jawed, frozen at the sight of the devastation, and I realize she must’ve stopped screaming a minute ago. She can’t stop this. She already put the energy into the world and now—
It has to go somewhere.
The shudders ripple with renewed fervor across the floorboards, ripping through walls and seats and people.
I don’t actually believe it until I see the blood. It seems fake, for a second, all the limp bodies in seats with their chests butterflied open. It seems staged—like a bad joke, like a bad theater production. But when I see the blood, thick and heavy, seeping through clothes and upholstery, dripping down frozen hands, I know we’ll never recover from this.
Juliette just murdered six hundred people at once.
There’s no recovering from this.
I shove my way through the quiet, stunned, still-breathing bodies of my friends. I hear Winston’s soft, insistent whimpers and Brendan’s steady, reassuring response that the wound isn’t as bad as it looks, that he’s going to be okay, that he’s been through worse than this and survived it—
And I know my priority right now needs to be Juliette.
When I reach her I pull her into my arms, and her cold, unresponsive body reminds me of the time I found her standing over Anderson, a gun aimed at his chest. She was so terrified—so surprised—by what she’d done that she could hardly speak. She looked like she’d disappeared into herself somewhere—like she’d found a small room in her brain and had locked herself inside. It took a minute to coax her back out again.
She hadn’t even killed anyone that time.
I try to warm some sense into her, begging her now to return to herself, to hurry back to her mind, to the present moment.
“I know everything is crazy right now, but I need you to snap out of this, J. Wake up. Get out of your head. We have to get out of here.”
She doesn’t blink.
“Princess, please,” I say, shaking her a little. “We have to go—now—”
And when she still doesn’t move, I figure I have no choice but to move her myself. I start hauling her backward. Her limp body is heavier than I expect, and she makes a small, wheezing sound that’s almost like a sob. Fear sparks in my nerves. I nod at Castle and the others to go, to move on without me, but when I glance around, looking for Warner, I realize I can’t find him anywhere.
What happens next knocks the wind from my lungs.
The room tilts. My vision blackens, clears, and then darkens only at the edges in a dizzying moment that lasts hardly a second. I feel off-center. I stumble.
And then, all at once—
Juliette is gone.
Not figuratively. She’s literally gone. Disappeared. One second she’s in my arms, and the next, I’m grasping at air. I blink and spin around, convinced I’m losing my mind, but when I scan the room I see the audience members begin to stir. Their shirts are torn and their faces are scratched, but no one appears to be dead. Instead, they begin to stand, confused, and as soon as they start shuffling around, someone shoves me, hard. I look to up to see Ian swearing at me, telling me to get moving while we still have a chance, and I try to push back, try to tell him that we lost Juliette—that I haven’t seen Warner—and he doesn’t hear me, he just forces me forward, offstage, and when the murmur of the crowd grows into a roar, I know I have no choice. I have to go.
Check out my reviews of the other books in this amazing series.
When unable to find a book, she can be found reading candy wrappers, coupons, and old receipts.
SHATTER ME is her first novel.
Foreign rights have sold in 25+ territories to-date and film rights have been optioned by 20th Century Fox.
Her work is represented by Jodi Reamer of Writers House, LLC.
To learn more about Tahereh Mafi and her books, visit her website. You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.
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