Review: Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi

Unravel Me
(Shatter Me #2)
Tahereh Mafi
Release: February 5, 2013
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Juliette has escaped to Omega Point. It is a place for people like her—people with gifts—and it is also the headquarters of the rebel resistance.

She's finally free from The Reestablishment, free from their plan to use her as a weapon, and free to love Adam. But Juliette will never be free from her lethal touch.

Or from Warner, who wants Juliette more than she ever thought possible.

In this exhilarating sequel to Shatter Me, Juliette has to make life-changing decisions between what she wants and what she thinks is right. Decisions that might involve choosing between her heart—and Adam's life.

Review:

I had to take a few days after reading this to calm my nerves, which were rightfully frazzled, before I could compose a review. Unravel Me is a beautifully written and exciting sequel that shows us the complexities of human relationships and I was even more engrossed in this one than the first in the series, Shatter Me.

In Shatter Me, I was sucked in by author Tahereh Mafi's unique style of writing and the steamy romance between Juliette and Adam, which was fairly sexy for a YA book. I loved Adam's sexy confidence and his attachment to Juliette. I was also intrigued by the story's villain, Warner, and found him dark and interesting, but I didn't view him as a love interest. Imagine my surprise when all this "Team Warner vs. Team Adam" stuff came about. In the interim novella, Destroy Me, readers got to read from Warner's POV and learn a little about his horrific upbringing at the hands of a psychotic monster and why he became so obsessed with Juliette. After reading the novella I felt like I could sympathize with Warner as a character and while learning his history and his inner most thoughts didn't completely justify all of his actions in Shatter Me, I felt like I could better understand his motivations and reasons.

Fast forward to me after Unravel Me: I am now completely infatuated with Warner and ready for him to keep me as his prisoner for as long as he wants.

In Unravel Me, everything goes topsy turvy and Mafi surprises readers with all sorts of shocking plot twists that I honestly didn't see coming. We get to watch as Juliette and Adam try to adjust to their new life at Omega Point and learn about the abilities of the other inhabitants. We also get to learn more about the outside world, a dystopian landscape of clustered towns of people living in horrible conditions. It all just expands the world Mafi has created and made me feel even more immersed in the story.

Omega Point is counting on Juliette to be a major force in their coming war with the Reestablishment, due to the strength of her abilities, but as we learned from reading her inner monologue in Shatter Me, she is a bit of a wounded bird and has to overcome her own issues before she can be of any help to anyone else. Juliette spends time training with Kenji in order to learn how to control and grow her abilities. By the way, Kenji is an absolutely amazing character who is somehow a perfect combination of humor and heart. I loved all of his scenes with Juliette and I enjoyed watching her grow and become stronger throughout the course of this novel. I think that growth is going to be a major factor in this series' final book.

Juliette and Adam suffer some relationship setbacks in this sequel and their ups and downs were at times, heartbreaking. To make things even more complicated for Juliette, she finds herself thinking about Warner all too often and the metaphorical dam breaks when she is reunited with him under unusual circumstances. I never thought you could make a Team Warner girl out of me, but his understanding of her deepest, darkest places is undeniable. And Warner gets his own steamy scenes in this book. In fact, I just about passed out while reading from all that steam, whew!

"Juliette," he says and he mouths the name, barely speaking at all, and he's pouring molten lava into my limbs and I never even knew I could melt straight to death. [...]
"I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend," he says. "The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body, Juliette-" [...]
"I want to know where to touch you," he says. "I want to know how to touch you. I want to know how to convince you to design a smile just for me." I feel his chest rising, falling, up and down and up and down and "Yes," he says. "I do want to be your friend." He says "I want to be your best friend in the entire world." [...]
And I drop dead, all over the floor.

Here's the thing, when it comes to fictional characters I love me some bad boys. I love watching a big and bad get all crazy once he realizes he's accidentally fallen in love and I love watching the growth he makes for the heroine. It's really the ultimate challenge for an author, to take a bad guy type of character  and make readers fall in love with him. Take Damon from Vampire Diaries, Barrons from the Fever series, Eric from Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood, Dorian from the Dark Swan series, etc. Making a character lovable enough for us to understand why the heroine would choose him while still keeping the integrity of the "bad guy" persona is an amazing talent and Mafi has somehow managed to turn me into a Warner lover.

I cannot WAIT to see what she does to me next.

Recommended for fans of: young adult dystopian, shocking bomb-like plot twists, people with supernatural abilities, love triangles, character growth, and good-looking villains in boxers.

This review is based on an advance copy of the book.

    

  5 / 5 stars

My reviews of other books in this series:
Shatter Me (Shatter Me #1)