Book Review: UNRAVEL ME by Tahereh Mafi

Also see my review for Shatter Me and Ignite Me





Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If brilliant meant blinding, scorching, aching, center-of-the-sun white hot, it might begin to describe how outstanding this second book in the SHATTER ME series is. I love the real world meets X-men powers dystopian that is a true EPIC READ. My mind has been wiped clean of every thought I have ever synapsed, and now I'm numb, sitting in a room with no furniture and trying to remember what it was I just finished reading. UNRAVEL ME is the definition of MIND BLOWN. Trust me. You don't even have to Google it.

Now I'm made of a thousand thousand miles of ribbon that has been unwound over all these frayed edge pages (which I love, by the way), and spilled onto the floor like some white bird is about to fly in here and weave it into a dress with a golden crown and some girl will trot off to a ball in it and meet the love of her life for the first time on the dance floor. This is particularly odd for me, since I'm male and not even remotely a princess...

I am astounded by how expertly Tahereh Mafi has crafted a story that is so powerful in the reading of it that I can't I can't I can't say enough to even come close to all the feelings I experienced in these pages. I adored SHATTER ME and 5/5 stars was no where close to what it should be rated. Well, let me tell you that UNRAVEL ME has raised those stakes a gasquillion times higher and farther and faster and lower than any line out of SHATTER ME ever did. Just. Wow.

I love how Tahereh Mafi goes into every dark and scary corner and puts the two characters who should never be put together in a room alone and says, "Go." She does this a thousand thousand times. I can't wait to see what happens next in book three. Also, I swear I'll crawl over a thousand pages of broken words if Tahereh also gives us an internovel story to read like DESTROY ME. Please, please. I beg of you. I'm not afraid to grovel. I'll do your dishes for all time.

The love triangle at the center of it all has already gone through the ringer in SHATTER ME, and intensified in DESTROY ME, but that didn't stop Tahereh Mafi from raising the bar and holding nothing, and I mean not-a-carefully-crafted-drop-of-sweat-roiling-down-your-back hold back is what you'll find in these amaZING pages I couldn't stop (breathing) turning.

Juliette is the perfect contrast of strength and kickass power at her fingertips, earthquakes in her wake, and naïve humility that swears she's not worthy of either boy's attention. Yet, she still has Adam, head over heels, devoted to her and while he tries to stay away, he's drawn to her over and over again.

When Warner shows up, he's equally attracted to Juliette's Venus Flytrap wiles and the words at the core of every word she poured out in the pages of her journal. I loved the unique approach Tahereh Mafi uses in writing in a journal style with cross outs and a kind of stream of consciousness mixed with poetry that pours out as powerfully as James Joyce did with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I especially enjoyed how grammar became a focal point for Juliette in expressing the way words became her tool for survival and anchored her to language while she struggled through isolation and imprisonment.

Not all of my questions were answered, chief of which is the mysterious bird that I hope finds wings in book 3. Regardless, I'm on board to discover where the next pages take me. This is by far one of the best series I've ever read. What an amazing read.

If you haven't read this book, or SHATTER ME and DESTROY ME, then what is wrong with you? DO IT!!

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