Book Review: Ignite Me {Shatter Me #3} by Tahereh Mafi

Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pub. Date: February 2014
Genre: YA/Sci-fi/Dystopian
Source/Format: Library/Hardcover

From Goodreads: The heart-stopping conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Shatter Me series, which Ransom Riggs, bestselling author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, called “a thrilling, high-stakes saga of self-discovery and forbidden love.”

With Omega Point destroyed, Juliette doesn’t know if the rebels, her friends, or even Adam are alive. But that won’t keep her from trying to take down The Reestablishment once and for all. Now she must rely on Warner, the handsome commander of Sector 45. The one person she never thought she could trust. The same person who saved her life. He promises to help Juliette master her powers and save their dying world . . . but that’s not all he wants with her.

The Shatter Me series is perfect for fans who crave action-packed young adult novels with tantalizing romance like Divergent by Veronica Roth, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and Legend by Marie Lu. Tahereh Mafi has created a captivating and original story that combines the best of dystopian and paranormal, and was praised by Publishers Weekly as “a gripping read from an author who’s not afraid to take risks.” Now this final book brings the series to a shocking and satisfying end.

**This review contains spoilers for Ignite Me, as well as the previous books in the series.

If you've been keeping up with my journey through the Shatter Me series, you know that I've made no secret of my mixed feelings about it. But, boy, did Ignite Me exceed my expectations! From the first page to the last, the book had my attention in a stranglehold. Finally things were moving, and finally Juliette was becoming the character I'd wished she'd been in the earlier books. At first, I found her personality shift a bit jarring; I mean, I know she got shot in the chest and all, but it was still kind of hard for me to reconcile this new, badass, take-on-the-world Juliette with the timid girl she was throughout so much of the previous books. Then again, if I were miraculously brought back to life, maybe I'd be filled with mega-confidence and vengeful zeal, too. In any case, Juliette's change was definitely for the better.

Speaking of personality shifts...Adam. WHAT THE HELL, DUDE? It's completely understandable that he felt hurt and betrayed and all that jazz, but WOW! Possessive, much? He was like the crazy-jealous controlling ex-boyfriend in this book, and if I had any qualms about him and Juliette being over, Tahereh Mafi did a good job of squashing them. It was frightening to see the dark turn Adam's personality took in this book; at times he was downright cruel. Toward the end I half-expected him to betray Juliette and the others out of sheer spite.

While Adam's drastic personality shift was enough to get me to root for Team Warner, I liked that Mafi offered us some stronger evidence for the case against Adam/Juliette. Juliette's relationships with both Adam and Warner went from being focused on physical attraction to the effect each boy had on Juliette her mentally and emotionally:

"I think he wants to pretend I'm the girl who doesn't really speak and spends most of her time being scared. The kind of girl he needs to protect and take care of all the time. I don't know if he likes who I am now. I don't know if he can handle it."
- Juliette on Adam

I like the way I feel about myself when I'm with him...Warner thinks I'm strong and smart and capable and he actually values my opinion. He makes me feel like his equal--like I can accomplish just as much as he can, and more. And if I do something incredible, he's not even surprised. He expects it. He doesn't treat me like I'm some fragile little girl who needs to be protected all the time."
- Juliette on Warner

I've got to hand it to Mafi--she can take a character you would never in a million years think you'd love and make you fall for that same character so hard you get whiplash. I hated Warner at the end of Shatter Me and for much of Unravel Me, and was furious with Juliette for being so easily blinded by her physical attraction to him. And then along came Destroy Me. Everything I thought I knew about Warner, well, unraveled. We got inside his head, learned his true motives and his reasoning, and suddenly, everything that happened in Shatter Me took on a whole different meaning. (I still can't quite forgive him for putting Juliette through the simulation, however. Regardless of the outcome, it was still a pretty sadistic thing to do, letting her believe that the child was real.) But Warner turned out to be interesting; he was neither wholly good nor wholly evil. He was complex. And, yeah, totally swoon-worthy. I mean, come on. Chapter 55? GOOD. LORD.

Ignite Me turned out to be pretty light on the action and surprisingly heavy on Juliette's personal relationships, not only with Adam and Warner but with the other characters as well. Especially Kenji. Oh, Kenji. I adored him. He provided great comic relief, and his lines almost always had me laughing out loud. While I enjoyed the focus on the personal relationships, it did detract a bit from the action in the story. So much of the last third of the book was spent on Juliette and Warner's relationship that the final battle seemed to come out of nowhere, and it felt rushed. There was a bit of struggle between Juliette and Anderson, but in the end it seemed like she won far too easily. I would have liked to see a more challenging fight. As for the final pages, I can't believe we're left hanging like that! There was so much more story potential and I had so many questions: How is Juliette going to become the new leader? Will there be backlash? What of the other sectors? What is going on in the rest of the world? And just how was Anderson able to create the Reestablishment to begin with? I NEED ANSWERS, TAHEREH!

And so ends my journey with the Shatter Me series. Verdict: I can say without a doubt now that I am most definitely a fan.

Book Review: Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay

Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay
Publisher: Delacorte Press, 2013
Source/Format:Library / e-book
Length: 391 pages

From Goodreads:

In the beginning was the darkness, and in the darkness was a girl, and in the girl was a secret…

In the domed city of Yuan, the blind Princess Isra, a Smooth Skin, is raised to be a human sacrifice whose death will ensure her city’s vitality. In the desert outside Yuan, Gem, a mutant beast, fights to save his people, the Monstrous, from starvation. Neither dreams that together, they could return balance to both their worlds.

Isra wants to help the city’s Banished people, second-class citizens despised for possessing Monstrous traits. But after she enlists the aid of her prisoner, Gem, who has been captured while trying to steal Yuan’s enchanted roses, she begins to care for him, and to question everything she has been brought up to believe.

As secrets are revealed and Isra’s sight, which vanished during her childhood, returned, Isra will have to choose between duty to her people and the beast she has come to love.

I didn't think it was possible for me to love a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" as much as I loved Rosamund Hodge's Cruel Beauty…until I finished Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay. In fact, I'm having such a hard time trying to form my feels into coherent sentences that I'm going to do this review a bit differently--with a bulleted list.

What I Loved About Of Beast and Beauty

• The mythology of the world. The story starts off with a beautifully written prologue about two entities known as the Dark Heart and the Pure Heart, and the dark bargains the humans make with them when they first arrive on the planet. It was so convincingly written that it felt like I was reading an actual myth. I loved how Jay incorporated the iconic roses into her retelling, turning them into living, bloodthirsty things. There is some seriously evil magic going down in this book.

• Multiple points of view. After the prologue, the story is split between three main characters: Isra, the princess and future queen of Yuan; Gem, a Monstrous soldier; and Bo, a Yuan soldier and the son of Isra's calculating head advisor, Junjie. I have mixed feelings about books with different POVs--sometimes it works, other times I find myself wondering why they're necessary. This book was a case in which the different POVs definitely enriched the story.

• The romance. As with any good "Beauty and the Beast" story, the romance doesn't blossom right away. At first, Gem and Isra are so caught up in their mutual hatred of each other's kind that you wonder how they will ever end up together. Even after Isra grows more caring toward Gem, sympathizing with the plight of his people, Gem still clings to his long-held hatred of the "Smooth Skins." Though he recognizes he has feelings for Isra, he is conflicted by his emotions and his duty to his people. 

• The villains: Bo and Junjie. I hated them so much. At first, Bo seems to be harmless, apart from his overeager attempts to woo Isra. But boy when that switch flips, you find out real fast that Bo is not a good guy. Not even close. He is chauvinistic, domineering, prejudiced, and bent on getting his way. At times I was so disgusted by him that I found myself literally shaking with anger while reading his point of view (props to Stacey Jay for writing such a villainy villain). And Junjie, ugh. No wonder Bo is so nasty, having such a cold, calculating man for a father.

• The book is constantly raising the question "who is the beast?" Is it Isra, who has been brought up to believe she is "tainted" by Monstrous traits? Is it Gem, a Monstrous himself, who looks like a beast and burns with hatred for the Smooth Skins? Or is it the power-hungry Junjie, and the nobles of Yuan, who fear the Monstrous and punish those born with the mutations?

•  The ending. I don't want to be spoilery so I'll just say that I may have shed a few happy tears. :)

So, have any of you read Of Beast and Beauty? What did you think?