Major props to the Shatter Me fandom for even getting me to pick up this book. I can see how I am 100% not the right audience for this book (despite my love of YA dystopian novels). In case you are questioning reading this and you felt in a similar position as me, please note that the writing is  juvenile (Juliette is a 17 yo, not a 13 yo…who writes like this?!) and the logic is so flawed. I cannot comprehend how a relationship manifested itself between Adam and Juliette? And why is there even a touch of sympathy for a psycho like Warner? Make it make sense, please. 

this book reads as a horror book to me & the fact that is marketed as a romance is incredibly alarming. juliette is the only female character with a name & has no autonomy for the entire story. at no point does she make any choice for herself, & instead of condemning this, the story seems to encourage her lack of agency. the two love interests are controlling and regularly put their hands on her despite her telling them not to. most of the scenes i assume are meant to be romantic are actually just sexual assault. despite her repeated demand that they do not touch her, both men ignore this hard boundary & grope her at every opportunity. horrifyingly, juliette is portrayed as secretly wanting this touch & just not knowing it, a rhetoric often employed by real life predators. it was incredibly difficult to get through scenes where both men forced her into situations she was very vocally uncomfortable in. at one point, warner is literally ripping her clothes off of her. her choices in love interests are a predator & a stalker. juliette is regularly dressed in revealing clothing & harassed by even the minor male characters, even when she asks them not to. 

sexual assault aside, the book also is just poorly written. it’s gimmicky & full of pointless metaphors that add nothing to the story but more words on the page. the twists are predictable, the plot is slow, & i swear to god if i have to read about adams blue eyes one more time i will actually lose my mind. i would not recommend this book to anyone. 

I feel kind of unsure how to rate this. Essentially, the story itself didn't do much for me, but I found it really compelling - I wanted to keep reading it and I was a bit disappointed to come to the end.

I love the writing style. I think it does very well at bringing the reader into the chaos and intensity of Juliette's mind as a traumatised, terrified teenager, and the writing becomes more or less frantic with her emotions. Oddly, there is a note at the start of the book explaining this narrative technique, which I can't blame the writer for because it's just as, if not more, likely to have been the publisher's idea. Bit of a shame, though - like explaining the punchline to a joke. Nonetheless, I think that's what drew me in to the narrative: the way that Juliette's feelings are expressed is lovely and makes her feel more human.

The romance with Adam was okay. I think it's a bit weird that he found out he could touch her unharmed because he was caressing her in her sleep when she was having nightmares, but his feelings for her come off as sincere. I think she genuinely loves him but sometimes I couldn't help but think that surely, affection from nearly anyone will feel amazing and that could make her <i>think</i> she's in love even if she isn't. I mean, you only have to look at her weirdly conflicting emotions towards War Criminal Warner to see that.

Ah, yes, War Criminal Warner. He's a pervert and a pathetic nepotism baby and likes to kill people for fun. He turns up to be emotionally abusive and sexually inappropriate towards Juliette, intending on grooming her into his weapon/consort. She inexplicably still thinks he's hot. Sometimes, it feels like this book is resisting the urge to become Baby's First Dark Romance and go down his route.

Towards the end, when she and Adam have escaped and later get caught, Warner has found out he can also touch her without being hurt, and so starts being even more handsy than usual. She spots a gun in his inside coat pocket and decides to go with it despite her discomfort just long enough to get the gun and shoot him, which is a bit of a girlboss move. So he's making out with her and picking her up by the arse and all this and she starts off being "ew yucky nasty Warner, this isn't my One and Only True Love Adam" and then thinks "...actually, I'm kinda into this". What??? I know that sort of thing is a trope in dark romance as a genre, but that is one of the reasons I do not read dark romance. The whole "this is sexual assault but actually I like it" thing is just gross to me. If you're into it as a fantasy and within the constrains of fiction, I can't stop you, but it's not my cup of tea at <i>all</i>.

Although I see how Adam can be viewed as a bit bland (he is), Warner is, like, bland with a bit of black pepper. I have a soft spot for pathetic men and for crazy sadistic characters, albeit typically not in romance, but he's just not very sexy about it. He's just a bit sad, to me. I don't care if his eyes are light green or whatever.

Juliette is incredibly horny in general. It's kind of funny sometimes. She'll experience the most traumatising shit you can think of and then Adam will touch her arms and she'll be like "oh YEAH babey". To be fair, though, she is the most touch-starved person of all time, so maybe that's not that weird.

This isn't a criticism, but a thing I noticed that I found strange. So, Juliette has been given maybe one small meal a day for the best part of a year, and presumably must be terribly underweight and look like she's on death's door. Even after eating normally for a couple of weeks, she's probably not looking exactly healthy. That's whatever in itself, that's just the nature of being imprisoned in an inhumane asylum. But there're consistent reminders of how tiny and little and small Juliette is that... well, it kind of gave me the ick. Look, I've got a height complex three times my size, so I'm not a fan of big height differences personally. I don't want to feel even shorter than I am. But with the context meaning she's probably very very skinny and frail <i>as well</i>, it made me a bit uncomfy. I don't know if this is just a straight woman thing that I don't get, a romance trope that I wouldn't have come across, or if the writer has a mild macro/micro kink that's coming through or what, which is why, even if I didn't like it, I don't mean it as critique. It just stood out to me.

The ending left more questions than answers because it's part of a series. That's fair.

Still, I like that she found a community with other people with powers similar to hers. I think that's cool.

I don't know if I'll read the other books, though. I'm kind of happy imagining that she lived safe and happily with Adam and it's all okay now, but then it <i>was</i> a fun book to read even if my review probably comes across as miserable so hey, we'll see!

I've been putting this series off for so long, but I've finally decided to give in to the hype and see what it was about. And now I'm finished I can understand how this series has garnered intrigue. I think the first book was a nice little introduction to the world and provide just enough level of mystery

Like how can Adam touch Juliette? How can Warner? What does that mean? How do some people in their world have supernatural abilities? Will Juliette see her parents again? What happened to Adam's parents? And Kenji's? How did their world get like this?  And most importantly how does Warner become Juliette's future love interest?

and suspense for the reader to want to continue.  

Also, I don't know if it was because I haven't read fantasy-type books since I was in grade school, but it was kind of hard to visualize some of the settings in their world.

And I can't help but confess that I'm curious about the Aaron Warner hype that has been circling the internet and that has become the centerpiece of this series. Because of what I've been reading so far I couldn't imagine how things could turn around. 

He literally forced himself on her (trying to kiss her). Forcing her to love him and be his secret weapon of destruction. And as of right now, he's trying to kill her. I just can't fathom how he's gonna be her future love interest.

 

If you told me you enjoyed this as a grown a** adult you are lying to yourself. Boring, annoying, reads like a self-righteous 3rd grader wrote fanfiction (coming for myself on that one.)
If you like this good for you I guess but frankly I will just never understand you guys that are absolute fiends for this series. Good for you, but I’ll stick with my Brando Sando books for now.

Update after attempting to continue the series: I got fed up with the writing style and didn’t like a single character. Quit midway through Unravel Me. No hate to those who actually like this series- just wasn’t my cup of tea.

The writing style is so annoying, every time she thinks something to herself there are words that are crossed out. It’s fine when what is crossed out is, for example, the opposite of what she says (although that also gets annoying sometimes because of how often she does it), but when it’s things like my heart, my heart, my heart or the pocket of the purple dress. The pocket of the purple dress, it’s so pointless and doesn’t add anything to the plot, at the beginning there is almost an entire page of just I am not insane. I am not insane… no one that is actually sane thinks like that, so maybe she should think again. Another thing that really bothers me in the writing style is when she “counts” things in her head, the beginning of chapter six goes like: “1 word, 2 lips, 3 4 5 fingers form 1 fist. 1 corner, 2 parents, 3 4 5 reasons to hide. 1 child, 2 eyes, 3 4 17 years of fear.” Or she’ll say something like: “There are 15,000 feelings of disbelief hole-punched in my heart.” Or “his face is 10,000 possibilities staring straight through me.” Girl, we get it, you’re edgy and different, but just shut up. 

You could say that the writing is supposed to be poetic or something but it’s not! It just doesn’t make any sense, sometimes it’s hard to read because of everything that’s crossed out, and it doesn’t sound pretty or anything. Especially what I just wrote before, the part with the “1 word, 2 lips…” that was so weird, it felt like the author just thought or random things and decided that it was a poem or something.

Also I don’t like that the numbers aren’t written in word form, it doesn’t seem like a professional thing to do when you’re an author. Overall from the fact that a ton of things are crossed out all the time, she’s always repeating stuff again and again, they don’t add anything to the plot, she counts everything for some reason and the numbers aren’t written in word form, it makes it feel like it was written by a young preteen on wattpad 🥴. The insane amount of repetition feels like a student is adding words to make their assignment longer. I really hope that this messy writing is going to stop at some point because I can’t imagine reading 10 more books like this.

Another thing that I thought was annoying about the writing style was all the weird reactions she had to things, for example, if Adam looked at her, her reaction would be something like: “I’m dying, I can’t breathe, I’m falling off a building” or something like that, the overreaction is through the roof. In the beginning

of chapter thirty three Adam says: “it just keeps hitting me. You’re really here. In my house.” To which her reaction is: “heat rushes up my neck and I fall off a ladder holding a paintbrush dipped in red.” What the hell does that mean?? 🤨 Omg a few pages later a line goes: “James and Adam glance back at me and I melt into pink Play-Doh.”

This is too funny lmao where did the author get these lines lol.

Kenji is so cringe and such an unrealistic character.

The guy comes to their home and because of him they now have to flee because if they stay they could literally be killed and James who is a CHILD could also be killed, and the guy not only doesn’t feel an ounce of remorse, he actually jokes about it and acts aloof, and tells them to stop worrying cause everything’s fine, nothing is fine! Because of him three people including a child have to flee in order to survive, they have nowhere to go, very little money, and thousands of soldiers are after them and he just does not care. If you were the only one in danger then it’s fine, you do you, but when your careless actions now may cost other lives as well, you don’t make jokes about it. I know that I’ve only read the first book and I don’t know how Kenji is going to turn out, but when I see how much people on the internet love him and I see how he acts now, I’m kind of worried. I also forgot, he basically sexually harasses Juliette, he makes comments that make her really uncomfortable, like telling her she’s sexy even though she’s uncomfortable, saying that a girl is sexy is fine but she’s uncomfortable, and he doesn’t stop, he keeps saying things like this and making sexual innuendos, that’s sexual harassment. There’s a dialogue between Kenji and Juliette that goes: “You don’t want me to touch you.” “Maybe I do.” He’s definitely grinning.” And he also keeps trying to make her “interested” in him.

Based on what people on the internet think about the book you can really see that the readers are very young, and that’s not a bad thing, what is a bad thing is the fact that the author writes a character that sexually harasses a girl but because it’s subtle and only verbal, you have young girls reading it and thinking that the guy is so funny, so cute and whatever. 

James was the only character I liked.

When I started reading this book I really wasn’t a fan but by the end I have been debating reading the next one? 
I didn’t love it but I’m intrigued to see if the story gets better as the series continues? 
I also wasn’t a big fan of the writing style- just personal preference but I know there will be people out there who adore it!! 
Who knows maybe I’ll love the series if I keep reading it but for now a 2.