Unravel Me

I must just go ahead and scream this out loud right now: UNRAVEL ME was sooo much better than SHATTER ME. More action based, more depth to the characters, more romance, more intensity. Just a whole lot more going on. The writing was also 100x better. Gone are the days of the over repetitiveness! I'm going to try to be as spoiler free as possible, but I may unintentionally reveal something that happened in the first book. Keeping this in mind, I'm not going to do a recap of the book like I usually do. But still, those of you who haven't read SHATTER ME: be warned! I need to mention the writing. One of my biggest issues with SHATTER ME was the awkward writing. Juliette repeated herself multiple times in a row. She mentally said things but then crossed those thoughts out and replaced them with something else. It made me a bit bats*** crazy, as I imagine being locked up in a cell for almost a year made Juliette. Now that she has finally started to embrace her abilities--sort of, for all intents and purposes--she's more confident and not afraid to speak up. The fluidity of her thoughts are more coherent and less stream of consciousness style that we saw in the first book. Mafi's incredible ability to paint a vivid, and very poetic picture is just as present as ever. There's always that dreaded second book syndrome where the writing, plot, and characters go down the drain. UNRAVEL ME completely avoided this with flying colors. Mafi's writing only got stronger. She's an author that clearly gets better with time and practice. Juliette, unfortunately, was still a bit whiny in the first half of the book. I just wanted her to suck it up and be happy that there are others like her. She still sulks and cowers whenever someone wants her to practice her skills. She mopes around still hating who she is. As much as I wanted to shake her into realizing she is this incredible, and incredibly powerful person, this does help show the tremendous amount of character growth she goes through as the novel progresses. She goes from whiny, everyone hates me to I'm a badass with incredible skills, time to take this sucker down. So proud of her. She's still vulnerable and that's what makes her such a strong character. I despised Warner, the leader of the Reestablishment in Juliette's sector, with a passion in SHATTER ME. He was cold-hearted, calculating, and only wanted Juliette to keep a tight grip on his army and the people in his sector. He had absolutely no problem forcing Juliette to touch one of his men or a baby and definitely had no problem shooting one of his soldiers in the head. Yes, he took Juliette out of her cell and gave her lavish things but he had the cruelest intentions. Or so I thought. There is a certain chapter in this book that took everything I felt about Warner from SHATTER ME and completely threw it out the window. I had hated Warner before. HATED him. But then Mafi goes and writes UNRAVEL ME. Like the title, Warner's true character is slowly unraveled to not only Juliette, but to us, the readers. We get to see a whole new side to him. Never in a million years would I have expected this. Now I'm gushing over him, basically. He puts on an extremely tough front, but deep down, he isn't all that way. The things he says to Juliette just cut me right open. This was one of my absolute favorite things about this book. Warner's character development was phenomenal and was done is such a right way. By the end of the book, he's still closed off for the most part. We know some of his secrets but you can tell that there is a lot more to Warner than meets the eye. I want to know more! I could go on and on about Mafi's ability to make me go from extreme hatred for a character to loving him--that's not to say I'm not still a bit concerned!--but I'll spare you. There was action galore in this book that I became completely invested and lost all track of time while reading. I could not put this down. Based off how much more I loved this book, I cannot wait for IGNITE ME to release. I know it's going to be spectacular, despite all the possible bloodshed and heartbreaking moments.

SPOILER ALERT - IF YOU'VE NOT READ THE FIRST TWO BOOKS READ NO FURTHER!! We find Juliette, Adam, and Kenji at Omega Point. Juliette and Adam are beginning to settle in, or at least Adam is. Juliette slips farther and farther into her old, semi-catatonic state with each passing day. Juliette has reverted to form, her fears and insecurities coming to the fore, easily shattering her resolution made at the end of book one. Castle, the creator and power that runs Omega Point, is working to get Juliette and Adam to learn how to harness their "Energy," otherwise known as their gifts. Just like Kenji learned that he could become invisible, over time and with a lot of hard work he learned to project that out. Now he has reached the point where he can cloak others with his invisibility as long as he is touching them. And this is what Castle is pushing Adam & Juliette to do. But Juliette spirals out of control in her head and is unable to make any progress. Having Castle push just makes things harder, as do all the secrets Juliette is keeping from Adam and the others. Secrets that just keep piling up as time goes by. Even after some of her secrets are revealed by others she still can't take that step to open up and share all she knows. Particularly when it comes to Warner for some unknown reason - except she knows in her heart of hearts why she is holding his secrets safe. The action is never lacking in this installment of the series, nor is the ongoing mental mess that is Juliette. Just when you think she's made a breakthrough she suddenly has a setback and reverts to form. Life with Juliette often seems to be one step forward and two steps back, then three steps forward and one step back. She just can't seem to truly break free of the insanity that she's been struggling to hold at bay for her entire life. Just when things begin to like like they are turning a corner for Juliette she learns something about Adam that has the ability to destroy not only her, but potentially him as well. The interaction between Warner and Juliette is wild in this book. It covers the entire range if emotions and even physical discoveries. Discoveries that are both a blessing and a trial in one, at least from Juliette's point of view. And though Warner comes off as being more stable than Juliette, I tend to think that it is simply a side effect of his military upbringing that allows him to seem so much more 'together' than Juliette. And Juliette's new knowledge of Adam opens the door for Warner to try to step into the breach. Once again Ms. Mafi has crafted a story that is full of compelling characters and intense, individual story lines that all twist together to form the central story. This is another pick it up and read until the end before you can set it down book. My only real issue is with Juliette's continual relapses. By now I am ready to see her take control of her own life and accept responsibility for her actions without constantly apologizing and dissolving into a quivering mess. Yet with the strong ending that once again leaves us hanging, there is no question that I will be reading the next book in the series the day it is released (unless I get lucky enough to wrangle an ARC somehow)!! Now to pray that another book IS planned to follow this one and answer all the loose ends, and that Juliette finds her spine and keeps it. :-)

I am still enjoying the writing style less than earlier books, or Watch Me which I read first, but I am addicted to the characters and plot so I am in for the series. If you enjoy Dystopian novels with strong protagonists and a less than black and white reality, you will enjoy these books. Tahereh Mafi is a wonderful writer and I doubt she could write a dud if she tried! 💜💙🩵💙💜

Det enda dåliga var att jag var tvungen att köpa alla böckerna i serien för att boken var så bra.

Amazing!!

En sevdiğim kitap serilerinden biri❤️

This book was amazing I finished it in 2 days, it was so interesting and kept me invested. This was definitely a lot better than the the first book to the shatter me series and there was some great character development for julliete