Review: Unravel Me (Shatter Me #2) – Tahereh Mafi

Posted 1 August, 2013 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 7 Comments

Review: Unravel Me (Shatter Me #2) – Tahereh MafiUntravel Me by Tahereh Mafi
Series: Shatter Me #2
Published by Harper Collins on 5 February 2013
Genres: Dystopian, Paranormal, Suspense, Urban Fantasy
Pages: 461
Source: Kindle Purchase
Buy on Amazon |
5 Stars

Juliette and Adam have arrived in an underground compound, where the other people around them have 'gifts' to deal with, albeit probably not as lethal as Juliette's gift. Kenji is part of the organization there, and he continues to treat Juliette with a mocking kind of respect. Juliette and Adam are trying to figure out how they can try to move their relationship forward, until Warner is captured and brought to the compound as wel...

Unravel Me picks up just after Shatter Me finished, and Juliette has a little bit of trouble fitting in. After being shunned for so long, and then in isolation for years, she feels as if everybody is just waiting for her to screw up so they can throw her out in the cold again. She can’t believe there is truly somewhere she can belong, and when Adam starts acting strangely, she thinks it is truly the beginning of the end. When Castle tells Juliette she has to take the first step, and make some friends, she wonders how he can be so smart, and yet so naive all at the same time.

Adam is really happy to be at Omega Point, here, his little brother is safe, they have enough food since they’re stealing from the Establishment, and they all learn how to deal with their gifts. There are some things he isn’t ready to discuss with Juliette though, and without him realizing it, this makes Juliette think he doesn’t really care anymore. Unravel Me takes off each characters armor and wall, one sheet at a time, until they are forced to acknowledge their feelings, their wants and their fears, their dreams and their hopes.

As Unravel Me continues to move both the story, the plot and the characters forward, it is easy for the readers to understand that it can only end in war – and that the Omega Point and the Re-Establishment will both do what they can to annihilate  each other.  When Juliette finds out more about Anderson, and sees Adam’s reaction to it, she starts keeping secrets – and continues to do so stubbornly until it almost brings the whole of Omega Point down with her in a downward spiral.

Unravel Me quote

The pace is faster and faster, and some things I was sure I knew how would happen twisted and changed the course of the story at the last second. Juliette and her inner strength is what might save the gifted people from Omega Point, but at the same time, her impulsiveness might also bring them all down. Her powers are much stronger than anyone could have guessed, and when it comes to the point where it seems it will all be over – Anderson has a few more cards up his sleeve until Warner makes his own decisions.

The character development in Unravel Me is very well done, Juliette sometimes acts like a petulant child, but I can understand her so well, she has never felt loved, had friends or been touched until now – and between learning to socialize and act with other people in mind, and learning to trust and feel trusted, she has a lot going on in her life.

As in Shatter Me and Destroy Me, the prose is heart achingly beautiful – I love how the words flow on the page, how some repetitions can quietly bring a point home, how a phrase can make all the difference because of it’s rhythm, it’s cadence and it’s lush words.

We’re running out of time, he said. As if time were the kind of thing you could run out of, as if it were measured into bowls that were handed to us at birth and if we ate too much or too fast or right before jumping into the water then our time would be lost, wasted, already spent. But time is beyond our finite comprehension. It’s endless, it exists outside of us; we cannot run out of it or lose track of it or find a way to hold on to it. Time goes on even when we do not.

It’s like a button in my brain is broken, like I’ve developed a disease that forced me to apologize for everything, for existing, for wanting more than what I’ve been given, and I can’t stop.

I don’t have a closet filled with umms and ellipses ready to insert at the beginnings and ends of sentences. I don’t know how to be a verb, and adverb, any kind of modifier. I’m a noun through and through.

It’s much harder now So much harder to resign myself to an existence of ice and emptiness now that I’ve known heat, urgency, tenderness and passion; the extraordinary comfort of being able to touch another being.

So I have to keep remembering that Warner and I are 2 different words. We are synonyms but not the same.

I nod. And I realize this is probably what I’m meant to do. Maybe this is exactly why I’m here. Maybe I’m just supposed to die.

Hope. It’s like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It’s fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence.

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Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms

About Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms

Linda is an English as foreign language teacher and has a Master's degree in English Language and Literature. She's an avid reader, blogger, compulsive one-clicker and a genre omnivore. Ever since she learnt how to read she has been seen with a book or two in her hands everywhere she goes.

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7 responses to “Review: Unravel Me (Shatter Me #2) – Tahereh Mafi

  1. Tahereh Mafi is becoming one of my favorite authors, and I can’t wait to read the next Shatter Me novel!

    Thanks for stopping by Jennifer 🙂

    • I agree! Did you read the in-between novella? It made me understand one character a lot better 🙂

      Thanks for stopping by Alise!

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