Book Rant: Unravel Me

BOOK RATING: 90%

GENRE: YA, Dystopian

Hello! Today we a chatting about Unravel Me which is the second book in Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me Trilogy. If you have not read Shatter Me it is about this 17 year old girl, Juliette, who when she touches people they die. And she has been locked away in solitary confinement for a long time while the outside world crumbles under the leadership of The Reestablishment. If you haven’t read Shatter Me I’m going to ask you to leave so nothing gets spoiled. Now if you have just read Shatter Me you NEED to read “Destroy Me” which is the novella that comes between these two. Novellas usually are optional but this one should be mandatory, They should have just printed it in the front of Unravel Me or in the back of Shatter Me because if you don’t read it you miss a lot of character development and things in Unravel Me won’t make as much sense and you won’t get as much out of it. Anyway, so we are at Omega Point and Juliette is trying to harness her energy, she’s tying to learn how to control her power. All the while war is creeping closer and Juliette is conflicted. If both sides want you as a weapon, who is right? And what is she willing to do for Adam’s safety and the safety of her new friends? This is a really quick read I know I didn’t give you a lot to go off of, but it’s hard to explain this book without spoiling anything! Just go read it if you haven’t then join us and we shall discuss. Spoilers past here! 

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So at the beginning of the book Juliette is being very annoying again. A lot of whining and bitching. Lots of crying and lots of completely relying on Adam and being very weak. Not an awful lot of character development as far as that goes. It’s really annoying. She’s “oh I’m so lonely! No one here likes me, blah, blah, blah” and she’s not even trying to talk to people. Yeah. You’re dangerous and you have some serious issues. But if you aren’t going to put in an effort you are getting zero sympathy from me. Am I being to hard on her? Am I? But am I really? She is totally dependent on Adam and you know what, fine. He’s the first person who could touch you but if you hadn’t closed yourself off so much, having to left him go wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Kenji was my favourite person in the world when he gave her that speech telling her to grow the hell up. She really needed that slap in the face and I’m just sorry that she’s a fictional character and I couldn’t have been me.  She says like 10 different times that shes sick of being weak and she’s going to be brave and every time she just goes right back. So this whole ending where it sounds like she’s going to set the world on fire, I will believe it when I see it. She just has so much potential.

Okay so Adam’s “gift” where he can disable other people powers. One of the few parts of this book where I was behind Juliette 120% was when she broke up with Adam because of this. It was responsible and Juliette we have seen to be a very selfish character and this was very unselfish of her. I think that Adam needed to put himself in her position. If he was hurting her by being with her, no matter what he felt, he would stay away from her. She just doesn’t want to hurt him, she refuses to take that risk. The problem came from the fact that she relied so heavily on Adam. She never learned how stand by herself. And that’s where I think Warner comes in. He challenges her and in turn she challenges him to be a better person. Where Adam just tried to protect her all the time and carries her and Juliette is literally weakening him.

Let’s talk about the Adam-Juliette relationship. Now this happen in these YA books a lot, where there’s a couple and one of them has a secret and the other asks what it is, the first person won’t tell them and then they just give up. It happens all the time and it is so unrealistic! Or maybe I’m just weird. But I would demand the truth. Whatever it is is clearly hurting Adam and it clearly involved her so “I can’t tell you” isn’t a valid answer. Yes I know she want to respect his privacy, but you’re a couple. If you cannot tell each other when something is clearly wrong, then your relationship has failed. Its not a relationship, it’s a “Oh you’re hot” and “Oh you can touch me” and they just make out.  We never get to see them talk in this book except when Juliette’s telling him that they have to break up. I know they don’t get a lot of time together but when you do see each other your immediate reaction doesn’t have to be that you start taking your clothes off.  I still like Adam and I just feel really sorry for Warner. I don’t like him yet but I no longer hate him. He’s just this monster because that’s what his father made him, he doesn’t know how to do anything else. I don’t want either of them to be with Juliette actually. I think she needs to learn how to be on her own, not in solitary confinement, but interacting in a group of people without having just one person to lean on. She’s like one of those girl who cannot handle being single, they always need a boyfriend. Figure out your own shit, make some friends, learn to trust people and then look into the whole romantic relationship thing. I said in my Shatter Me book rant that I thought they had rushed into this relationship and they did. Juliette needs to figure out who she is because she’s been locked away since she was a kid essentially. She never got to discover what kind of a person she is.

We get Juliette snapping at Anderson and shooting out both his legs and Kenji stops her from killing him. Then we get that Adam and Warner are brothers!  So Anderson must have a gift too. All three of his kids have one. (James’ gift was just kind of just thrown at us, I hope that transition gets smoothed over a bit in the next book.) Given that their gift involved as defense mechanisms against Anderson I honestly think James’ is the most effective. Warner is like that kid who when you would play superheros on the playground would be “I just take other people powers.” There was always one and everyone always got so mad at that kid.  I really hope we get Warner finding out that he is related to Adam in the next one because that will be interesting. I also want Juliette to learn about Warner because we (having read “Destroy Me”) know all these little details about Warner and how is isn’t really this monster he pretends to be. He’s more of this broken boy who is trying to survive. But Juliette is still judging Warner for these things he’s done like when in Shatter Me he shoots a soldier through his head, we earned that he was actually an abusive husband and Warner killed him to protect his wife and kids but Juliette doesn’t know these things because Warner doesn’t want to look weak.

What made me laugh was when they were taking Warner back as hostage: “Warner’s head is on my lap. His face is smooth and calm and peaceful in a way I’ve never seen it and I almost reach out to stroke his hair before I remember exactly how awkward this actually is. Murderer on my lap. Murderer on my lap. Murderer on my lap.” I love the scene with Juliette and James where James is mad at her then after Juliette explains he says he’s sorry he was mad at her. It’s so cute. James is my favourite character. Him and Kenji. And then Warner and the puppy, it was the sweetest thing! I think that was mentioned in “Destroy Me” from Warner’s POV.

Then we have Chapter 62. Warner and Juliette are making out, getting all hot and heavy and Warner has this sweet moment when he’s opening up to Juliette and asks her to call him Aaron and what does she say? Adam. Warner is crushes because he’s opening up which he has never done before and she says the wrong name! That is the meanest thing she could have done. As I said earlier, I don’t want them together but that was just so brutal. Juliette just hurts everyone. She’s hurting Adam by being with Warner and Warner by still loving Adam.

So all the while was have this war going on. And honestly I’m not really interested in it. There are these 10 or so characters we know and I just want to see how their story plays out, If the world gets fixed I’ll call that a bonus. I’m not sure how they are going to resolve world issue this in one book anyway.  Just switching topics real fast, when Juliette gets shot, how did Warner get the girls there that fast? Assuming Anderson has decent aim and he was aiming so she would die slowly, she still only had 2 minutes tops. Did Anderson kidnap the girls too? No matter, I’m really glad that Warner saved her life. It all worked out.

Overall I really liked this book! We started to see Juliette grow but we need way more of it. Ignite Me is the third book and it comes out February 2014. I am so excited for it! We have a cover!

It’s so beautiful! Also, also, I saw this on Goodreads:

I

Grieve

Nothing

I

Take

Everything

I was excited about that. So that is all for now, bye guys!