Also posted on Rally the Readers.

This is going to be one of the messiest reviews I’ve written to date, and it just can’t be helped. Every time a series that I love comes to an end, I can’t assemble my thoughts for the review. I’ve had a few days to mull over Ignite Me, and I cannot. Find. The words. I try to go into every review with at least a rough outline of what I want to cover, but this book has thoroughly scattered my brain. Something else that I’m finding can’t be helped here: spoilers. I attempt to avoid them whenever possible, but I really don’t think I can discuss anything about this book without referring to specifics. I’m not even sure I can discuss anything coherently, so let’s see where this review goes.

In any other book/series, I don’t believe I would care much for Juliette. She’s often insecure, whiny, and too wrapped up in her own thoughts to notice much else. Granted, she’s had a miserable life and her parents locked her up in an asylum, but after two books, I really needed her to pull herself together. At the end of Unravel Me, it appeared that she was finally going to ditch the moping and start taking some action. And she does—eventually. I’m still up in the air with my opinion of Juliette’s character progression in Ignite Me. Despite her vow to avenge the destruction of Omega Point, Timid Juliette hangs around for a bulk of the book. When the time comes to plot the overthrow of The Reestablishment, Juliette volunteers herself as the post-Reestablishment leader. Umm . . . what? This announcement was on the of the last things I expected from her, and maybe that was the point, but given how wrapped up in herself she is for most of the novel, I was rather skeptical of her leadership skills.

As I said before, in another book, Juliette would have tested my patience, but the series has always maintained an awareness of her flaws, mostly in the form of Kenji. I love Kenji. He’s become one of my favorite secondary characters ever for his sarcasm and frankness. Most importantly, he calls Juliette on her wishy-washiness. Every. Single. Time. Kenji has been the voice of reason throughout the series, and he doesn’t limit himself to getting on Juliette’s case, either. There’s another character for whom Kenji has a stern word or two (or three), and that character is Adam.

The biggest shock of Ignite Me was the absolute drubbing Adam’s character takes, and I say this without even being a member of Team Adam. There’s some definite foreshadowing of his transformation in Fracture Me, but I’d really believed that his doubts about his love for Juliette in that novella were meant to fuel the mystery over the resolution of the love triangle. I was so, so wrong. Almost everything he says to Juliette in Ignite Me is laced with eyebrow-raising viciousness, and although I might be able to cut Adam a bit of slack for being upset over a certain turn of events, I can’t excuse all that he says and does. I do feel bad for his fans because he started out as such a decent guy in Shatter Me.

I’ve always been somewhat confused about what’s going on in this world, and I have to say, it’s become less and less important as the series has gone on. Normally I would take a dystopian novel to task for a shortage of details about the world, but I didn’t fall in love with this series for its dystopian elements. I fell in love with it because of Tahereh Mafi’s beautiful prose and because of one man: Warner.

I lost any ability to rate this series based on non-Warner factors way back in Shatter Me, when he first arrived on the scene. And I make no apologies for that. Never have I become so obsessed with a single character in a book or series that I lived to read every page he was in. I really didn’t give two hoots about whether or not the resistance succeeded as long as Warner was okay. I also wasn’t really fazed by the slow build-up to the finale, and then the book’s hurried efforts to wrap everything up. I know I should mind these little things, but they didn’t take anything away from reading about Warner. I can’t help finding him utterly, utterly fascinating. I can't. Bravo to Mafi for writing such a complex, mesmerizing, and unforgettable character. Believe me, I could have easily devoted this entire review to Warner and why Ignite Me deserves five stars because of Warner.

So yeah, I’m giving Ignite Me five stars. Because of Warner. This wasn’t quite perfect in all areas, but it was in the one that counted, and that was enough for me. Reading Ignite Me made me extremely happy, as five star books usually do.