Audiobook Review – Shatter Me (Shatter Me, Book 1) by Tahereh Mafi, Narrated by Kate Simses (2/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Dystopian
Length: 9 hours and 12 minutes
Publisher: HarperAudio
Release Date: November 15, 2011
ASIN: B0067VJ4IA
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Shatter Me series
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 2/5 stars

“One touch is all it takes. One touch, and Juliette Ferrars can leave a fully grown man gasping for air. One touch, and she can kill.

No one knows why Juliette has such incredible power. It feels like a curse, a burden that one person alone could never bear. But The Reestablishment sees it as a gift, sees her as an opportunity. An opportunity for a deadly weapon.

Juliette has never fought for herself before. But when she’s reunited with the one person who ever cared about her, she finds a strength she never knew she had.”

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Shatter Me series. I got this as an audiobook from Audible.com.

Audiobook Quality (2/5): This wasn’t the best audiobook. The narrator uses a sort of “little girl” voice for Juliette and sometimes her voices for other characters were too similar to discern from each other. Additionally, they use a scritching noise to show that something Juliette is thinking has been scratched out (which is done in the book). This noise is incredibly annoying. Juliette also repeats herself…a lot. I almost stopped listening to this after listening to the narrator repeat “I am not insane” for like 5 minutes straight….it almost made me insane.

Story (2/5): I wasn’t a fan of this one. Not a lot happens in this story and it is incredibly predictable. Basically Juliette escapes an institution and joins a rebel group; does that sound like a million other YA dystopian novels to anyone else? Oh wait she has super powers too!!! Add to the above that this suddenly turns into an X-Men episode in the last couple chapters of the book and I was just done with it all. It was so silly and such a waste of time to listen to.

SPOILER ALERT
I also found it annoying that the first boy who can safely touch Juliette is the one she falls desperately in love with. It was super annoying that there is this big mystery about why some people can touch Juliette safely when it’s incredibly obvious that only people who love her can touch her.
END SPOILER

Characters (2/5): Our lead heroine, Juliette, is overly dramatic and the language and metaphors she uses are dramatic to the point of silliness. She just came across as completely silly to me. I didn’t really like any of the other characters any better.

Setting (3/5): This is set in a sort of post-apocalyptic world where a political group called The Reestablishment has taken over. It’s pretty typical for a dystopian setting. We never find out a ton of detail about how The Reestablishment came to power. This was very focused on Juliette and her trying to adjust to her freedom and power. I would have liked to learn more about this world, especially things that would differentiate it from the many other dystopian novels out there.

Writing Style (2/5): This writing style was not for me. Juliette speaks and thinks in very dramatic and outlandish metaphors. Everything is compared to something extreme and dire. There are plenty of quotes from this book in other Goodreads reviews, so I don’t feel a need to provide more examples. There is also a lot of repetition, especially in the first part of the story. I thought the whole thing moved too slowly and, when I look back at the story, there wasn’t a lot that actually happened. I do think some people will like the metaphors and language, it is different and artistic, but was definitely not for me.

My Summary (2/5): Overall this book and Mafi’s writing style were not for me. I did not like the writing style or how the audiobook was narrated. I thought the story was slow and predictable, and just didn’t offer any differences from a million other dystopian books out there. The parallels between the end of the book and X-men are incredibly stark and had me groaning a bit. I will not be reading any more of this series.