Review: 'Shatter Me' by Tahereh Mafi

I have been locked up for 264 days.

I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and

the numbers in my head to keep me company.  1 window. 4 walls.

144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet I haven't spoken

in 264 days of isolation.

6,336 hours since I've touched another human being.

Juliette hasn't spoken in almost a year. Hasn't interacted with another person in months. She spends her days counting cracks in the walls and peering through the small, dingy window of her cell waiting. Waiting to see a bird fly. Waiting for her life to make sense. Waiting. Then Adam is shoved into her cell. Just like that - everything changes.

As long as she can remember, Juliette has been different. A freak. A danger. The slightest brush of her skin causes overwhelming pain in the recipient and even brief full contact will kill. An accidental murder lands her in a series of juvenile detention centers and psych wards until, finally, she is placed in an asylum where she exists in total isolation and borderline mental breakdown. Juliette is fascinating. She is strong-willed and passionate, but damaged in multiple ways due to her experiences at the hands of her parents, teachers, classmates and jailers.  Every person who might have cared for or about Juliette has betrayed her, yet she remains hopeful of a better existence.  Each day she watches from her tiny window for a bird to fly past; her personal miracle.

There are no flat characters in 'Shatter Me'.  Each character is given a back story, relevance and individuality which makes for a very rich, believable dystopian read.  There are also few characters who do not have at least some redeeming value (though the 'bad guy' truly is a sociopathic monster).  Mafi puts the reader into a police state where fear is a primary motive and neighbors betray neighbors.  The levels of paranoia and desperation demonstrated by the characters of 'Shatter Me' are wonderfully illuminated by Mafi's use of language.

'Shatter Me' is one of the most beautifully written novels I've ever read.  Poignant, thought-provoking and amazingly lyrical.  This is so much more than just another dystopian novel and I highly recommend it to both teen and adult readers.

Book Source: Personal Copy
Reviewer: Rebecca

Recommended Ages: 14+ Mature themes, psychological abuse
Recommended for Readers of:

Review: 'For Darkness Shows the Stars' by Diana Peterfreund

Inside, the darkness rustled around her. She moved through the space from memory.

The floorboards creaked beneath her feet, and slips of paper whispered upon her face

and hands...She lifted the shade and bathed the room in silver...Moonlight skimmed over

the foorboards...It wasn't enough to read by. But who needed to read? She new them

by heart. All around her, strung from the ceiling and wafting softly in the draft,

Kai's paper gliders glowed in the moonight like pale spring shoots

bursting from the soil.

Elliot's life is controlled by the protocols.  Laws put in place after the Lost Wars decimated the human population, leaving two classes of people, the Reduced, those with limited intelligence and speech abilities, and the Luddites, the children of the group who survived the wars unscathed by the biological weapons deployed during the conflict.  In the post-war devastation, the Luddites created a society of landowners and serfs where wealthy plantation owners harness the Reduced's physical strength and in return for providing food and shelter.  Now generations have passed and a new, unrecognized, "class" of human has developed, the Posts (post children of the revolution).  Posts possess the same levels of intelligence and skills as Luddites, but are the children of the Reduced.  As more and more Posts rise to positions of power throughout the Luddite world, rumbles of social revolution are arising, heralding changes that threaten Elliot's very existence.

There is a lot going on in Peterfreund's dystopian world; revolution, social justice, noblesse oblige, religion, science, exploration and more.  The reader is thrust into this world with little in the way of explanation which means that the first several chapters require the reader to both follow the plot and develop the world.  A prologue or brief history of Peterfreund's world would have allowed the reader to pay more attention to the initial relationship between Elliot and Kai; a relationship that informs the rest of the novel's events.  However, this initial confusion is quickly resolved and does not detract overmuch from the story.

According to Peterfreund, 'For Darkness Shows the Stars' is based on Austen's 'Persuasion'.  Having never read that particular Austen novel (I'm somewhat shamed to admit that), I have no real comment on the relationship between this story and its inspiration.  However, I do not believe that readers need to have read 'Persuasion' to enjoy 'For Darkness Shows the Stars', or that the novel needs the support of Austen's novel to stand on its own.

Elliot's emotions are at the forefront of the story and readers experience her fears, triumphs, joys and pains as though they were experiencing the events themselves. Kai is, in my opinion, not quite as likable as Elliot, but still authentic for an angry teenage boy who has been taken advantage of by multiple people.  Several secondary characters have histories that I would have loved to learn more about but, as the novel is already over 400 pages, I understand why further development of secondary characters was avoided.

This novel's strength is in the emotion behind the action, which Peterfreund conveys with poignant and sometimes unsettling efficiency.  Overall, this is a good read and has the potential to generate quite a bit of discussion in a classroom setting or book club.

Read Diana's response to questions about 'For Darkness Shows the Stars' cover art.

Book Source: Local Library
Reviewer: Rebecca

Recommended Ages: 14+ Adult themes alluded

Recommended for Readers of:

Dystopia Rising

Dystopian novels for teens.

Please note I have only included the first book in a series.

Highly recommended books are marked with an ‘ * ‘.

The Compound by Ann Aguirre
*Pure by Julianna Baggott
Above by Leah Bobet
The Selection by Kiera Cass
Matched by Ally Condie
The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe
The Pledge by Kimberly Derting
*Wither by Lauren DeStefano
*Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
*Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin
*Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Starters by Lissa Price
Across the Universe by Beth Revis
Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Unwind by Neal Shusterman
Article 5: Compliance is Mandatory by Kristen Simmons
Blood Red Road by Moira Young
Partials by Dan Wells

Review: 'The Pledge' by Kimberly Derting

In Charlie's world every person's fate is determined by the class they are born into and constrained by language they are allowed to speak.  Meeting the gaze of a person who outranks you while they speak the tongue of their class is an crime punishable by public execution.  Acknowledging that you understand a language other than that of your class will get you killed.  Which is a problem for Charlie: she has never encountered a language she doesn't understand.  This secret defines her existence, the looming threat of discovery a shadow over her family.  But when Charlie meets a mysterious boy who speaks a language she has never heard before the fragile strands of her secret begin to come unwound leading to a destiny she could never have imagined.

The world of The Pledge comes alive from the first page, leaping into the conciousness of the reader and enveloping in the constant fear of life under tyrannical rule.  Personal freedoms are few in this place and civil unrest is brewing beyond the city's walls, threatening the power of an aging but still powerful queen.  A queen who will do everything in her power to maintian her place.  Derting has creating characters with foibles, backgrounds and motivations that are rich and textured.  Her characters come to life, dragging the reader through the pages long after she should have put the book down for the night.  Recomended for readers who enjoy dystopian fiction.

Discussion points:

• Class division
• Civil disobedience

Recommended for Readers of:

Suzanne Collins	Veronica Roth	Lauren Oliver	James Dashner

Review: Pure by Julianna Baggott

This book has the impact of an atomic blast balanced with the subtle force of germ warfare.


The Detonations destroyed the world as it was; what has survived is utterly changed from the Before.  Groupies roam the streets turning their many eyes in search of victims, OSR takes anyone over the age of 16 to be either soldier or cannon-fodder, and altered strange amalgamations of animal, plant and mineral wait for the unwary.  Above the turmoil of the outside sits the Dome, a haven where the Pures where protected from the blasts and where they wait for the Earth to renew itself.  Pressia has just turned 16 and the OSR is coming for her; but she does not want to kill or be killed and, in running, puts herself on an even more dangerous path.

Baggott has crafted a gritty, dirty, painfully real world where survival is a struggle and life is anything but ordinary.  Characters are wonderfully scarred both physically and mentally with all the accompanying emotional hangups.  Somehow Baggott has created characters who are both more and less human, but who epitomise the human condition.  The plot takes a while to develop so it is the characters that truly draw the reader in and sneak themselves into brain and heart.  I found myself thinking about Pressia's world often between readings, wondering what life would be like after the bombs drop.  Would it be better to die in the blast?  Or survive as something far different than you were before?  Would your values remain?

This is a cautionary tale, Baggott does not flinch from the horrors of life after atomic/nuclear/biological armaggedon.  Recommended for older readers.  Unique, haunting and strangely beautiful, I have never read anything quite like Pure.

Recommended for Readers of:

Review: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

“Which was worse, Risa often wondered -- to have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted, or to silently make them go away before they were even born? On different days Risa had different answers.”

Welcome to the future. Abortion is illegal, but unwinding is an accepted and encouraged practice for stressed parents. Between the ages of 13 and 18 a parent can choose to have their child unwound a process in which a youth's body, bones and organs are harvested. Technically the kid is still alive since 99.44% of them is used in surgeries and organ transplants, so why should the Unwinds mind? It's not like they are dying - just transitioning to a different type of existence.

Connor is and Unwind and he minds very much.

This is a fabulous, disturbing and sure to be controversial novel. Shusterman deftly handles difficult questions that have no answer: What is life? Who makes the choice? What is a soul? What make a person human? The novel is told in alternating chapters mainly from the perspectives of Connor, Risa and Lev, two Unwinds and a Tithe.  (Unwinds are randomly chosen youth for the unwinding process while Tithes are raised knowing they will be unwound and taught that the process is an honor.) The characters are well-crafted, completely believable, and will have readers holding their breath, cheering and cringing in despair. This book really makes the reader ponder what they believe, what they know and what they think, all while entertaining the imagination. Unwind is an outstanding dystopia with both male and female appeal.

Recommended for Readers of:
Suzanne Collins, Veronica Roth, Lauren DeStefano, Lauren Oliver

Rating: 5 Stars
Teen Gauge: 13+

Dystopia Rising

Sorry for the unexpected brake in posting – like many of my friends, I spent the New Year and most of the first week of 2012 at home drinking hot tea and waiting for my throat to stop feeling as though it were filled with crushed glass. [We have apparently been passing plague around.]  Anyhow, I am back among the living-if-not-truly-well so back to sharing my rambles with the world. :D

I know it has been discussed quite often, but I am fascinated by the rise in dystopian literature targeted toward the YA audience.  What, exactly, is the appeal of reading about a world where society, and sometimes the planet, has collapsed?  Does it make readers feel better about the state of the current world?  Personally, I am an escapist reader and I always have certain reservations about reading dystopian lit.  If I’m reading to escape the bad in my own life why would I want to read about a world come apart at the seams?  But the allure is there.  I believe it is something of the “what if” factor; people love to play at knowing how they would react in a certain situation.

My two favorite dystopian novels of 2011 were: 

Wither by Lauren Destefano

& Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Lauren DeStephano's Website

Lauren Oliver's Books

Why do you (or don’t you) read Dystopias?