Review: Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi

UNRAVEL ME :: TAHEREH MAFI

RATING: 3.5 STARS

GENRE: YA DYSTOPIAN

SUMMARY: Juliette has escaped from the nasty Reestablishment and is free to run around and make out with Adam as much as her heart desires. They join up with some underground rebels who have similar powers and plot to kick some Supreme ass. Obviously, shit gets in the way, including that pesky habit of her killing everything she touches and one overly obsessive dude, who happens to be the hottest guy on the planet.

“Hope. It’s like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It’s a fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. And it’s the only thing in the world keeping me afloat.”

Alrighty, so to be honest I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the first book in this series, Shatter Me. The prose annoyed me to no end .. yeah, parts were beautiful but it got old. Juliette was more than a little whiny and helpless and I just wanted to slap her half the book. Like, your touch can KILL PEOPLE. Stop moping and start slaying.

Unravel Me is a fair bit better. The prose has been cleaned up, and rather than swamping the writing with numerals and cross-outs, Mafi uses that style to enhance Juliette’s voice. It still lacks A LOT in worldbuilding (post-apocalypse, but why?), and the plot is shaky and takes a back seat for most of it. BUT it makes up for all that with some absolutely memorable characters and relationships. I’m such a sucker for solid characterization … give me a book about a guy who does nothing all day but chew paper and make his character beautiful and I will eat that crap up.

 Oh, and Unravel Me has some of the most beautifully written, intense smut I ever did read. Good night! Wow.

Warner. Just Warner. I love watching his character growth … it’s one of the driving factors for me continuing to read this series. You begin to see why he does the things he does in this book, and the reasons behind his crazy-psychoness. And that he’s really not as crazy and psycho as you thought. Just damaged beyond belief.

Read if you love books that focus more on character growth rather than action! Or if you’re a sucker for dystopian.