Review: Unravel Me

Title: Unravel Me
Author: Tahereh Mafi
Publisher: Harper Collins
Release Date: February 5, 2013

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it's almost
time for war.

Juliette has escaped to Omega Point. It is a place for people like her—people with gifts—and it is also the headquarters of the rebel resistance.

She's finally free from The Reestablishment, free from their plan to use her as a weapon, and free to love Adam. But Juliette will never be free from her lethal touch.

Or from Warner, who wants Juliette more than she ever thought possible.

In this exhilarating sequel to Shatter Me, Juliette has to make life-changing decisions between what she wants and what she thinks is right. Decisions that might involve choosing between her heart—and Adam's life.

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I had a lot of complaints about the first book in this series. My biggest was how repetitive it was, because listening to it as an audiobook gave me not only a headache, but some serious anxiety as well. I just wanted to scream SHUT UP! So of course, you guys know me. And so I had to read the second book myself.

Where to begin, where to begin.

How about with the grammar, or lack thereof? There's a difference between using fragments as statements--something very common in YA lit--and just not finishing a sentence. Or using numbers instead of writing them out. There are so many things that are grammatically atrocious, it hurt to read. Of course, I didn't notice these things during Shatter Me, as I listened to the awful audiobook.

Moreover, this book is not dystopian. It is a cheesy romance with a weak heroine disguising itself in the vaguest dystopian worldbuilding I've ever read. During the first book, we know something has happened, and the world was taken over by the Reestablishment. But we get hardly any glimpse of what that is. We know the weather changed, but we don't know how or why. We don't know much of anything about the world.

Unravel Me does a perfect job of answering just enough questions to leave you completely confused. It's lazy worldbuilding, and it's not worth the read.

The first book centers around Adam and Juliette. Well, all Adam does in Unravel Me is walk around moping like the robotic teenage crybaby he's become. Oh no. I can't touch you, Juliette, but I will die if you leave me!

I love a good romance, but this was over the top and ridiculous. Juliette only showed the bare minimum signs of strength when Kenji pointed out how weak and insensitive and self-centered she constantly was. But after that, she went right back to her usual self-centered self, crying that oh no, poor Adam I love him and I can't be with him and the world revolves around my love life, not this whole war thing we're trying to fight!

So how in the world do both Adam and Warner keep calling her strong and brave? She is so not either. She literally hides in a tunnel or starts to cry when someone says something mean to her. She refuses to do anything to help Castle out at first because she doesn't care enough to really learn her own powers. Then when she sees what everyone else does, she flips out. When finally getting invited on missions, she does for herself and spies on Warner instead of running away like she's supposed to. She almost gets herself and everyone else caught, because she can't help herself. 

Juliette keeps secrets she has no business keeping. She's selfish and weak and needs constant reality checks.

Then there's Warner. The stereotypical mean and bad boy who is just so misunderstood because everything we thought we knew about him must be a lie, right? Because why not? Take a psychotic person, and make him love dogs. Take this same person, and make him fiercely loyal and gentle. I'm sorry, but this doesn't work. You need to at least have some kind of small hints about this when he's first introduced, because otherwise, it just seems like a complete 180 for the character.

The only character who had any depth to him at all was Kenji. Not to say that there was much. He was still the class clown type. Not much else going on there, except that he's apparently popular and important.

Then when have the absolutely ridiculous and nonsensical metaphors.

"I don’t know how to be a verb, an adverb, any kind of modifier. I’m a noun through and through."

WTF does that even mean?

Overall

Not worth your time or money. We all know I hate myself, so I will be reading the final book in this series out of sheer curiosity. But I regret having ever started this series to begin with.

1 star