Shatter Me (2011)
Shatter Me is a 2011 young adult fiction book written by Tahereh Mafi.
Juliette Ferrars has not touched another person in months. Her skin is lethal; one contact and she can drain the life from a grown man. The Reestablishment, the regime that rose as the world's food, air, and weather failed, has kept her locked away as a monster, then decides her power could serve as a weapon. Tahereh Mafi tells it in Juliette's raw, crossed-out interior voice, all longing and dread. When a face from her past turns up in the cell beside her, the walls she built around herself start to shift.
Quick answers
What is Shatter Me about?
Juliette Ferrars has not touched another person in months. Her skin is lethal; one contact and she can drain the life from a grown man. The Reestablishment, the regime that rose as the world's food, air, and weather failed, has kept her locked away as a monster, then decides her power could serve as a weapon. Tahereh Mafi tells it in Juliette's raw, crossed-out interior voice, all longing and dread. When a face from her past turns up in the cell beside her, the walls she built around herself start to shift.
When was Shatter Me published?
Shatter Me was published on 15 November 2011.
Who made Shatter Me?
Shatter Me was written by Tahereh Mafi.
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A few thoughts on Shatter Me
Juliette's deadly skin echoes Rogue from the X-Men films, another young woman terrified of what her own touch can do. The Hunger Games matches the shape of a girl a regime wants to forge into a weapon. And Stranger Things centers a similar figure: a lab-raised teenager whose power the adults around her are desperate to aim.
Kids whose bodies get turned into government weapons
Juliette's touch alone can kill, and the regime holding her sees only a weapon to use once it decides she's worth the risk. Stranger Things' Eleven is raised inside a program built around her lethal gift, The Darkest Minds hunts kids whose powers make them targets, The House of the Scorpion treats its hero as spare parts, and Unwind turns an entire generation's bodies into a resource to be claimed.
Regimes that control your job, your love life and your own mind
Juliette's world runs on the Reestablishment's total control over who gets food, freedom or even a place to exist. The Testing turns adulthood itself into a life-or-death exam run by the state, Matched lets an algorithm assign your job and your partner, Delirium treats love as a disease the government can surgically remove, and Feed shows a society that has fully outsourced its citizens' minds to a corporation.
Locked up together until the wall around her heart cracks
Juliette has spent months without a single safe touch, until a face from her past turns up in the cell right beside her and starts wearing down the wall she built. Vampire Academy, Hush Hush, Fallen and Beautiful Creatures each pair an isolated heroine with someone dangerous who reaches her anyway, and Serpent & Dove forces two enemies into the same cramped, forced closeness until it turns into something else.
A rebellion against total control finally boiling over
Juliette exists inside a Reestablishment that rules through fear, but that same order is starting to crack at the edges. The Hunger Games shows a rebellion finally breaking into open war against the Capitol, Mockingjay follows that fight all the way through, and Insurgent and Allegiant push their own uprising past the point where anyone can stay neutral.